My name is Baldrick and this is my very own video diary
about my latest adventure with Mr Blackadder.
Oh, um, cut.
BALDRICK: Having sorted the opening out,
It's time to look behind the scenes at the exciting world of filmmaking.
This is the catering wagon and they've put out my own special lunch.
This is Thai curry.
You can see all the bits of Thai people in it.
This is a ligament. I think it's a thumb ligament.
Look, lots of little pink bits of willy.
Over here there's a stew from some sort of animal.
Don't know what it is, but...
It's hamster! That's nice.
Of course, I've got special access to all my film friends.
Hello, Stephen. Can you say something for my video diary?
Will you just leave me alone, you great mountain of yellow-headed pus?
- Off. Go away. Go on. - Tim.
- Shoo. - No?
Mr Firth, can I...
Hey, what do you think you're doing here?
- Hello, we're doing a bit of filming. - Go on, go on.
- Oi! No, let go. - No, I don't want you out here.
(SCREAMS)
BALDRICK: I thought that went quite well, really.
Baldrick, why, may I ask, are you dressed like that?
Would you like the short answer, my lord, or the long one?
- Oh, the short one, please. - Whim.
The short answer is whim?
Yes, my lord.
What, out of interest, was the long answer?
It was a whim.
I think Blackadder in the end is based on the fact
that Rowan is very good indeed
at playing extremely ferocious, tough characters.
- You're not eligible to vote. - Why not?
Because virtually no one is. Women, peasants, chimpanzees.
Lunatics, lords.
That's not true. Lord Nelson's got a vote.
He's got a boat, Baldrick.
Your brain, for example, is so minute, Baldrick,
that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open,
there wouldn't be enough inside to cover a small water biscuit.
BALDRICK: Thank you very much.
As a reward, Baldrick, take a short holiday.
Did you enjoy it? Right...
Villains are always more fun to play than good guys.
That's a well-known fact.
And I enjoy characters
who have a vindictiveness in them.
I always have done. In the end, it's just more fun.
Lieutenant, revolver, please.
Oh now, sir, you really shouldn't do this, you know.
Come on, George, with 50,000 men getting killed a week,
who's going to miss a pigeon?
What was fun, I think, was that by the time we finished the fourth series,
we'd got a bit into parodying ourselves,
we were a bit saying, "Well, there's always one episode where we do this,
or one episode where we do that
and Baldrick always says this and Blackadder says that."
And coming back to it after 10 years, we'd forgotten some of that stuff,
so it was a bit like starting afresh, which was fun.
The strength of Blackadder had always been
it was just dialogue in one room, and very witty dialogue.
So what we had to do was give it a sense
that this was going to be a bigger treat than usual.
And I hope we've pulled it off.
I mean, because you get all the qualities of the old Blackadder,
but on a kind of scale that is like a huge American movie.
- What can you see, Balders? - People in very short skirts, my lord.
CURTIS: The whole reason we wrote this section
is to get them in increasingly short skirts.
So that's Rowan.
And Hugh is going to be, with any luck, two and a half inches shorter than that.
And then Stephen's skirt is actually going to be above pant level.
So that's what we've spent the last hour
rather pathetically talking about, how high boys' skirts can be.
And that's the joke from this scene, I think,
although Stephen is talking in Latin.
I think he's finding that quite tricky.
(SPEAKING LATIN)
Oh, bugger.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think they enjoy doing all this dressing up
in skirts and Roman kit?
They're very attractive kits, aren't they? I think they do.
Not as much as the interesting reconstructors
who do it for fun at weekends, but there we go. Have you seen them yet?
Of course you've got to have marched 20 miles a day
for a heck of a long time, been in the army for 25 years,
fought heavy barbarians and lived on army cooking.
And that way, you're either dead or you have huge, muscular legs.
You know, mine are, what can I say, aesthetic.
Then we're having an attack by Scottish hordes.
DIRECTOR: Action!
(ALL SCREAMING)
INTERVIEWER: Excuse me? Excuse me?
Just wanted to ask why the director picked genuine Scottish people?
Cause we're pretty vicious.
177, Take 2, A camera.
Action!
(ALL SCREAMING)
- Hold it, hold it, hold it. - BALDRICK: (BLEEP) off!
(LAUGHING)
Great spirit of Jupiter, our culture is centuries ahead of theirs.
Why, we have toilets
and wipe our bottoms with vinegar-soaked sponges.
Yes, and they wipe their bottoms with Roman soldiers.
What's unusual about this is that this is on location
and there's no audience apart from the crew.
But the actual making the series was in...
We would do in front of, I don't know, sort of 300 people
and on the night,
no matter how carefully you decided to assemble your...
this delicately drawn portrait of a particular character,
on the night, given the fear and adrenaline, I'd just go, "Ah!"
And pull faces.
Hoorah!
(BURPS) Oh no, there I go again!
Bravo!
(CLUCKING)
# Row, row, row your punt
# Gently down the stream
♪ Belts off, trousers down Isn't life a scream ♪
Fabulous. University education, you can't beat it.
The interesting thing is that Melchett is very like Hugh
and George is very like me. - Yeah.
- It's funny how that happens. - Yeah.
No, well, there is a difference between Elizabethan Melchett,
if one cared to find one. He's a little bit quiet.
- I like to think that he is from within. - I'm looking forward to this.
- Okay. - He's rather more suave.
- They shout. - Whereas the later Melchett just goes...
(BOTH BLEATING)
Blackadder, attention!
(LAUGHING)
Excellent native Cockney wit.
(GROANS)
Okay. Ready? Here we go.
It's called a clever person's board.
These are called clever person's boards
and they are for clever people to read.
Pay attention. Come on. But my news is Rome on all sides
is being attacked. Passive, you'll notice.
But the emperor does nothing
but poison his mother and marry his horse.
Roll, please.
162, take 7. Pick-up A camera.
(LAUGHING)
(SPEAKING LATIN)
Do you see?
- Did you hear that, Balders? - No, my lord.
(SPEAKING LATIN)
I'm sorry.
Sometimes you laugh at things that you shouldn't be laughing,
like sometimes Rowan stumbles on a line.
And we shouldn't laugh at that, but we do.
- Brilliant, just brilliant. - What, o centurion?
We're facing a horde of ginger maniacs
with wild goats... No, no. Dash, blast.
Stephen turns up as a Roman in the shortest skirt,
where his skirt's up here, in a nappy,
and it's always wonderful when you actually can't call "cut"
because you're giggling so much.
After three years of sub-zero temperatures,
at last a sufficiently warm climate
to allow my wedding tackle to descend from my armpit.
Superb.
Of course, it can go horribly wrong.
It's a pretty mercurial thing, a film crew,
and you can have horrible days where nothing goes right
and everyone gets very bad-tempered, except me, strangely.
I've an almost endless patience and love of my fellow man.
Action!
Last one there gets hacked to pieces by Rod Stewart's great-great-grandfather.
(MEN SCREAMING)
- Excuse me. - Yeah?
Is it time for my interview yet?
Well, I've got a few other things to do first.
I'm free now.
- I've got a little window. - No, yeah.
You smell absolutely yummy now and not at all like a turd.
Oh, what a pity.
And action!
- Ah, Lord Blackadder. - Your Majesty.
Why are you looking so strange?
You're wearing very weird clothes.
And you're looking rather old and ugly, actually.
It took us forever finding Miranda.
We interviewed, it seemed, every woman between the ages of 18 and 36.
And we'd written a very shallow part.
And Miranda, who's an extraordinary and weird performer,
came in and gave it all this strange depth and mystery and violence
and lunacy and childishness and stuff like that.
So we changed it a lot for her but cast her.
- Melchy? - Ma'am.
Edmund has been very cheeky.
Shall I laugh at him or chop his ugly head off?
I think Elizabeth likes him because he can actually
wheedle his, well, wile his way out of a tricky situation, you know.
She sets traps for him all the time.
- A present? - Mmm.
Uh, yes, certainly, Your Majesty.
RICHARDSON: She surrounds herself with this court of basically fawning people,
so she has a support system.
There's, you know, the nurse, who can talk to her like she's three.
Girls are normally called Elizabeth.
- Or Mary. - And Donald.
- Mouth is open, Nursie, should be shut. - But it's true, sweet one.
I had three sisters and they were called Donald, Eric and Basil.
- Then why is your name Nursie? - That ain't my real name.
- Isn't it? - No.
- What is your real name then? - Ah, Bernard.
She's just a daft old eejit, really.
And she sits there and she loves her little babby.
You know, she's like a mother hen by proxy and all the rest of it
and a scatological mind, but she doesn't obviously realise it is,
it's just natural to her to talk about pooh-poohs and things.
You almost were a boy, my little cherry pip.
- What? - Yeah.
Out you popped out of your mummy's tumkin
and everyone shouted, "It's a boy, it's a boy!"
And then someone said, "But it hasn't got a winkle."
And then I said, "A boy without a winkle?
"God be praised, it's a miracle. A boy without a winkle."
Melchett's like a sort of, you know, avuncular adviser
who is incredibly vulnerable.
Nice try, Melchy, but it's no use. I'm still bored.
Well, I'm very sorry, madam.
Your royal father used to be very amused by my impersonation of Columbus.
He built a flat halfway up her bottom.
He spends his time flattering her but also terrified
that any moment she would suddenly order his head chopped off
'cause she might think it would look nice at the end of a pike
cause she's that kind of a girl.
Grey, I suspect, Majesty.
I think you'll find it was orange, Lord Melchett.
Grey is more usual, ma'am.
- Who's Queen? - As you say, Your Majesty.
There were these magnificent orange elephants...
She loves to tease them.
It's usually the tease of the blade.
Go forth and bring back lots more minty things
in the next five minutes,
or I'll come after you and crush your skull like an egg.
(LAUGHS)
- Do you know what an arsehead is? - I've got a vague idea, my lord.
Well, it's someone whose head looks like an arse
and out of whose mouth come things
that resemble things that come out of an arse.
- Oh, right. - So what are you, Baldrick?
Sounds very much to me, my lord, after weighing up all the forensic evidence,
- that I am in fact an arsehead. - That's right.
(GRUNTS)
Oh, I'm... I'm so sorry. I am sorry.
Wait a minute. You're not...
Colin Firth has actually refused to do
all sorts of things for me throughout his career.
So, we thought we'd pay him back by having him...
(LAUGHING) ...having the shit kicked out of him by Rowan.
It all happened extremely suddenly.
Yes.
That is for every schoolboy and schoolgirl for the next 400 years.
So suddenly that I'm a little bit suspicious
of far down the list of choices I was, really.
I know Colin thinks that he was low on the list,
but he was only, I think he was...
You know, he would have been, he was definitely in the top...
Down the bottom of the top 20.
So it could have been worse.
- Oh, and... - Ow!
That is for Ken Branagh's endless uncut four-hour version of Hamlet.
Who's Ken Branagh?
I'll tell him you said that and I think he'll be very hurt.
These are the worst 30 seconds of Shakespeare's life.
Robin by name, Robin by nature.
- Robbin' babes of their bras... - Woof!
...the rich of their cash and everyone else in the UK
the chance to be the coolest cat in the kingdom.
- Woof! - Woof!
Maid Marian, we needed someone new.
So we'd thought we'd pick the best-looking woman in Britain,
nay, the world.
I am snogging Robin Hood.
(MEN CHEERING)
And then...
(GASPS)
This is the first thing I've done,
I'm just doing it 'cause I couldn't say no.
- INTERVIEWER: Yeah. - Because it's Blackadder.
Gorgeous.
Ding dong!
Chaos theory tells us
that if a butterfly so much as breaks wind, it could cause a cataclysm.
Blimey, we'd better be careful, then, my lord,
'cause when Robin Hood appeared back there, I let one go
that will have killed every woodland creature for 100 yards behind me.
Well, exactly.
Hello, I'm all prepared now.
Yeah, all right. We'll come and get you.
Would you like to do it now, 'cause I could, I could just...
Yeah, all right. Thanks a lot. I'll come and get you.
- What's happening, my lord? - Well...
Oh!
The words "oh" and "bugger" would seem to be appropriate.
One of the places in which they find themselves is
in the company of this incredibly convincing dinosaur.
We could afford a head and a leg, nothing in-between.
But it's very frightening from the inside of the time machine.
MAN: One, two, three.
Yeah, it didn't go up.
It needs to go up immediately in the air as well,
so the head's going up too late.
Baldrick is the hero of the day,
with a terrifying secret weapon.
My pants.
(COUGHING)
They are a little bit whiffy, aren't they? Sorry about that.
Action! The underpants go in.
One, we start sniffing,
two, we start going up with our mouth open and three, we're away.
88, take 3.
Okay and action!
(SCREAMING)
MAN: More flashing.
Back in, back in, back in.
Bring it down.
MAN: Pull the dinosaur out. Come forward, guys.
Get up a little bit if you can.
MAN: One, two, three!
Okay and cut. Cut it there.
- Okay, good, I got enough of that. - Good.
- Very nice. Very good. - Well done, everybody.
Very, very good.
The great joy of doing it for the big screen
is to be able to do stuff fantastically,
we didn't have many dinosaurs in Blackadder or spaceships
or huge rampant armies.
So all of that was great fun.
Sniff my skids!
(SNIFFING)
(SNARLING)
(SHRIEKING)
You know, this is not sophisticated humour,
but it makes you laugh every single...
I don't know what it is about our underpants.
And especially if they're rotten, dirty and smelly.
My grandfather loved 'em so much
he never took 'em off for his entire life.
And then my dad wore 'em for his entire life
and now I've worn 'em for mine.
And they do have a lovely bouquet.
Do you want to have a smell? Would you like...
Can we put something for the underpants to lie on?
MAN: Carry on, carry on.
Slightly more forward on the "Oh bugger" line, is that possible?
Taking the hangers off and very slightly...
It's very funny.
(SCREAMING)
- A lovely uniform today, by the way. - Oh, thank you. I think it works.
- (EXPLOSION) - Ooh!
The French are portrayed in this scene today
as being vaguely effeminate.
- Whoops. Whoops. Whoops. - Whoops. Whoops. Whoops.
They call us weeds and whoopsies.
(LAUGHING)
Action!
(IN FRENCH ACCENT) My Emperor, I, the Duc de Darling, bring news.
The English have reached Waterloo.
- Good. Prepare to attack. - Very well.
May I just ask,
why do we want to invade Britain in the first place?
We invade, Darling, because the British think they're so tough.
They think we French are sissies.
They call us weeds and whoopsies and big girls' blouses.
With respect, my Emperor, we are whoopsies.
Reality check. Watches off.
Watches off, Sarge.
- Earrings out. - Earrings out, Sarge.
- Willies in. - Willies in, Sergeant.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
CURTIS: Tim McInnerny has to do two accents in the course of two minutes,
which is very shattering for him as an actor.
Perhaps we could teach them ballet.
And then they will pull all their huge muscles and not be able to fight.
Your Grace, the French are approaching.
Excellent. I have a superb plan which cannot fail
but result in the complete destruction of the French army.
Oh, splendid. Well, tell me at once, Your Grace,
and I'll spread the news to the troops.
Richard and Ben had always written him as Captain Cartwright
because they couldn't think of a name that was funny
and also characterful but was...
but also believable.
Tim couldn't quite fix on the character and then Stephen
thought of this idea of calling him Darling,
which, in fact, was quite ironic that Stephen should have done,
'cause there was actually a boy at my school called Darling
who had a most awful life.
It just popped into my head that he ought to have a name.
All right, all right, all right. I'll deal with this, Darling.
Tim being the wonderful actor he is, as soon as he...
You know, we did a few things of trying out calling him Darling
and Blackadder coming in and saying, "Morning, Darling."
He just developed a twitch in his left eye
and the mannerism and the whole character was born.
What the hell are you playing at, Darling?
Don't be ridiculous, Darling.
I did invent this twitch, which is a nervous tic, really.
And he's not even... He doesn't even know he's got it, really.
But it does get worse in moments of tension, particularly with Blackadder.
Good morning, Captain Darling.
How are you feeling, Darling?
Cup of coffee, Darling?
What do you want, Darling?
It's Captain Darling to you.
Having done it for six weeks,
it then took me, I think it was two months to get rid of it.
There's a lovely and convenient misunderstanding
that because Ben has a reputation for kind of knob gags,
that it must be me, the quieter of the pair,
who is the great historical expert,
whereas in fact it's the other way round.
I write knob-gags to please Ben because I know they make him laugh
and Ben couldn't be brighter about history and knows all about it.
I don't know that I even know who won the Battle of Waterloo.
Very well, the plan is... God, I'm brilliant.
You know, I surprise myself sometimes, I really do.
- Yeah. - The plan is
to allow the French to come within a hundred yards of us and then,
and this is the completely original and brilliant part...
- Yes? - Then...
I could do my interview now.
No, it's fine. Don't worry. I will come and get you.
Well, I'm free. I'll service you whenever you like.
No, that's fine. Thanks a lot. Do you just mind moving out of the way?
- No, you do... Not now? - Yeah, thanks a lot.
You know, the great shortage in our industry is writers,
rather than people who can perform funny stuff.
There are lots of funny actors about, very, very few funny writers.
Or very, very few writers with whom one feels
a personal and professional empathy.
And I feel it obviously fantastically with Richard, you know.
Whenever I read anything which he's written for me,
I just want to do it, I know I can do it,
I know it's right for me, I know it's appropriate.
He has a kind of, I would say, there's a musical attitude to his lines.
He kind of knows if they're properly written
exactly how he wants to say them,
exactly what the rhythm of a line is.
He has perfect pitch, he can get the perfect delivery.
Right, Baldrick. Let's try again, shall we?
This is called adding.
If I have two beans and then I add two more beans,
- what do I have? - Some beans.
Yes and no.
Let's try again, shall we? I have two beans,
then I add two more beans, what does that make?
A very small casserole.
Baldrick, the ape creatures of the Indus have mastered this.
It's therefore quite frustrating for him because when he doesn't quite get it,
he won't accept it, whereas many other people would say,
"Well, that's pretty damn good."
Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest breakthrough in travel since Mr...
Ugh, hello.
MAN: Cut!
CURTIS: Rowan has heard the perfect tune,
so when he gets a syllable wrong,
it's like a flat oboe in the corner of the orchestra.
He just can't live with it.
And he's horribly distracted by having made a tiny mistake.
My suggestion would be that actually Tim...
Surely they're supposed to believe that Blackadder can march forward.
CURTIS: We've always made a lot of changes in rehearsal,
because, you know, the standard set by John Lloyd
was that we should try and make every single line as funny as we could.
Off with his head!
(EXCLAIMING)
No. I mean it.
Ben writes in a very focused, punchy manner.
And he writes very well, you know,
for the kind of characters
and attitudes that I think I can present.
You look sweet as a little boy.
Kate, he looks like what he is, a dung ball in a dress.
The same dread hovers over the moment
when you reach one of those stupid similes.
And he goes, "I'm as stupid as..." and you think, "Oh, no.
This is going to take me an hour and a half
and Ben's gonna say it's not funny."
God, you really are as thick as clotted cream
that's been left out by some clot
until the clots are so clotted up you couldn't unclot them
with an electric de-clotter. Aren't you, Baldrick?
This is as exciting as discovering that due to an administrative error,
the new boy in the dorm is actually a girl
with a big chest, a sense of adventure and no pants.
MAN: Okay and action!
One, take two.
Action!
(CLANGING)
Take three. Take four. Take five.
Well done, Baldrick. I'm... Oh no, I'm so sorry.
Okay.
Well done, Baldrick.
Let's have another go.
Thirteen.
Well done, Baldrick.
I'm so proud of you, I'm gonna give you a wage rise.
Thank you very much, my lord.
Well, perhaps not... Oh!
Well done, Baldrick.
I'm so proud of you, I'm gonna give you wage rise.
Thank you very much, my lord.
Well not all year, obviously, but you know, at Christmas time.
Well, perhaps not extra money, but some chocolates or something.
A chocolate.
After I've had a little nibble of it myself.
Thank you very much, my lord.
Good.
(ALL CHEERING)
- Should it be now? - Yeah, okay.
- I'm really excited about this. - Oh, great. Okay.
- Do I look all right? - Absolutely fine.
- Smart enough? - No problem at all.
Can I tell them that story about Stephen Fry and the Thermos flask?
Yeah. I'll give you a cue when we're ready. Okay.
- It's very funny. All right. - Right. Are we running?
Okay. Go.
# Let joy fill every Briton's heart
# For now our country's going to make it
#At last a king who looks the part
#At last a queen who looks good naked
# Blackadder, Blackadder
#A monarch with panache
# Blackadder, Blackadder
♪ He's got a nice moustache ♪