Q: | Sir, given your sometimes robust comments on modern architecture, can you share your thoughts on the Millennium Dome with us? |
KING E: | Certainly, it’s the most beautiful and exceptional piece of architecture since the Parthenon, and I will be spending the money that the Prime Minister paid me to answer that on a very fast new car … |
Q: | Prime Minister, do you feel that your socialist plans to make the monarchy more relevant in the twenty-first century have been in any way changed by the deep and abiding debt of gratitude you owe your close friend King Edmund? |
BALDRICK: | I am certainly happy to concede that the King had a strong influence on my decision to make the monarchy more relevant in the twenty-first century by giving the King total power over everything except the price of a dog licence. |
This epic final twist allowed for a jubilant close to the mini-movie, thanks to the rousing new orchestration of the theme by Howard Goodall. For all the comedic imponderables in
Back and Forth
, it unquestionably looked, and sounded, wonderful, and Goodall’s cinematic soundtrack was a large part of that. ‘It was great actually,’ he recalls. ‘The whole nature of it required there to be a bigger scale, and it was nice to do the score and the song at the end with those
bigger resources, and a great recording. I knew by then that the BBC had lost all the original recordings we’d made, so it was nice to have a higher-quality version of it. From time to time I’ve thought of going back to the King’s Singers people who sang on the originals, Simon Carrington, and then Jeremy Jackman who sang series two, and re-recording them from scratch.’
Another problem with
Back and Forth
is that, since its final airing in the Skyscape cinema, it has only been seen out of context. Dome visitors approached the cinema past enormous cut-outs of the
Blackadder
team, posed for photographs with Baldrick’s time machine, and then queued up to watch the then exclusive film on a huge screen, with a laughing audience all around them. The special was eventually broadcast, after much corporate back-stabbing, on both Sky and BBC1, and though the latter broadcast did include an audience recording, the commercially available version lacks any of that atmosphere (even if it did come bundled with
Baldrick’s Video Diary
, a behind-the-scenes featurette in which everyone is interviewed, bar Baldrick himself). Visitors to the Dome could also buy a special programme with proceeds going to Comic Relief, which featured the whole script of
Back and Forth
, as well as new material put together by the retained stand-in scribes Cecil & Riley, including a Blackadder Insult Generator, an interview with Rowan’s false goatee beard and a guide to Baldrick’s Dome (which boasted the world’s biggest turnip, the Belly Button Fluff Zone, and of course the movie
Baldrick Back and Forth
). Without this programme, the viewer also loses the King’s highly suspicious disclaimer:
‘As you know, generation after generation, my family have only ever wanted one thing: to bring pleasure to all mankind. (Except Baldrick.) May God bless you all in the new millennium.’
EDMUND BLACKADDER REX
Blackadder, by Royal Appointment
Whatever perceived offence may have been caused by Blackadder dethroning the reigning Windsor family, it is the notable affection shown for the character by HRH Prince Charles and his family which has kept the
Blackadder
name ticking over, such as it has, in the twenty-first century. Indeed,
Back and Forth
was not even the character’s comeback, Atkinson and Fry having revived a long-dead Blackadder live onstage two years earlier, especially for the Prince of Wales’s fiftieth birthday.
The traditional image of king and jester was never quite reflective of real court life, but there’s still a long history of Humour by Royal Appointment in Britain – Henry II was a big fan of Roland the Farter’s annual Christmas show, Henry VIII doted on his court jester Will Sommers, and most
Blackadder
-esque of all would be Edward II’s commissioning in June 1313 of a special nude dance, to be performed by none other than Bernard the Fool. But no royal figure has done more to revive the link between monarchy and mirth than Prince Charles. Since his days as a young
Goon Show
fan, impressing Milligan and Sellers with his Bluebottle impressions behind closed doors, the heir to the throne has proven himself to be a devoted comedy aficionado, from generation to generation, and time and again the country’s best comics have reciprocated this affection, with each Royal Variety Performance still a dream booking for many comics today. And just as the sitcom’s military theme made it popular with the armed services, few comedies have wibbled the royal frusset pouch as pleasantly as
Blackadder
.
Like any good Licensed Fool, Blackadder’s appearances before royalty have tended to stress the ‘comedy roast’ element of the role, pricking a royal family who have always been keen to be seen laughing at their own expense – within reason. But as a self-proclaimed supporter of the establishment, in a real-life echoing of Edmund’s own deference, there aren’t many comedians who have
received royal patronage as readily as Atkinson, as his own roasting in
The Tall Guy
hinted. He and Curtis sent a telegram from their West End show for the Prince of Wales’s first wedding in 1981: ‘All love, fun and laughter from the cast and company of the Rowan Atkinson Revue’, and received the reply, ‘Enormous thanks for your wonderful message which is heartily reciprocated.’ Six years later, having received invitations to a private audience with the Prince (the two of them bonding over a love for Aston Martins), Rowan was very nearly reprising the role of Lord Blackadder for
The Grand Knockout Tournament
, Prince Edward’s infamous historical pageant and charity extravaganza in which Atkinson’s Lord Knock – master of Alton Towers and husband to Barbara Windsor’s Lady Knock, but Blackadder in all but name – opened the proceedings with a deadpan speech presaging a host of celebrities (including John Cleese and the rest of the
Not
team) participating in gunge-filled festivities.
He was also no stranger to the Royal Variety Performance, performing numerous monologues over the years, but Blackadder’s royal debut was created for a separate birthday entertainment, staged in October 1998, and broadcast on ITV a month later. We discover the Cavalier Sir Edmund in the same quandary as the Black Adder in the original pilot – arranging a royal entertainment against his will:
SIR EDMUND: | To my Lords of the King’s Own Council. I received this morning your kind invitation to organise a gala performance, to celebrate his gracious majesty, King Charles, surviving another year with head and shoulders still attached. I am replying by return to thank you. And when I say ‘to thank you’, I mean of course, to tell you to sod off. I would rather go to Cornwall, marry a pig, have thirteen children by her and see them all become Members of Parliament … My reasons, my lords, are twofold. In the first part, it is a well- and long-established fact, that royal galas are very, very, very dull. So dull that strong men have been known to stab their own testicles in an effort to stay awake through the all-singing, all-dancing, no-talent tedium that represents British Variety at its best. There are more genuine laughs to be had conducting an autopsy. There is more musical talent on display every time my servant Baldrick breaks wind. If the King has even half a brain – which I believe is exactly what he does have – he will spend his birthday in pious prayer, naked, in a bramble patch, with mousetraps attached to his orbs and sceptre. I hope I make myself clear. I am yours, as ever, Lord Blackadder, Privy Counsellor. Shortly to be Privy Attendant, if Cromwell has his way with the aristocracy … ( |
CHARLES I: | Behhh, Slackbladder! Fol-de-rol and hi-de-hi. Behhh! It’s my birthday and I’ll ‘behhh’ if I want to! I just popped in to see if you were going to organise my royal gala? |
SIR EDMUND: | Well, Your Majesty, it’s interesting that you should mention it … |
CHARLES I: | I was talking about it the other day to Lord Rumsey, and the cringing cur dared to suggest that we tone things down a bit to pander to the popular mood. I want you to kick his arse and give him a good clout about the head. |
SIR EDMUND: | Well, certainly, sir, but – |
CHARLES I: | You’ll find his arse in a ditch in Tyburn and his head on a spike at Traitor’s Gate … Show me what you can do. Improvise, let’s have a look. |
SIR EDMUND: | Um … well … Your Majesty, your Royal Highnesses, my lords, ladies and gentlemen. I stand here tonight as excited as a masochist who has just been arrested by the Spanish Inquisition. What you are about to witness will be the most exciting piece of entertainment since Bernard the Bear Baiter stopped using a big brown cushion and actually got himself a bear … |
The most extraordinary thing about this surprise return to the Stuart period, as any
Blackadder
fan could see, was Fry’s depiction of Charles. Where his Comic Relief persona had been dithery and eccentric in an undeniably familiar way, before HRH himself Fry’s performance was pure Melchett bombast (although perhaps one could suggest that by the time of his arrest in
The Cavalier Years
, a few nights in a blackcurrant bush had extinguished Charles’s ‘behhh’). Fry adds, ‘I think it’s well known, a) that I’m friendly with the Prince of Wales, and b) that he has a great sense of humour. Well, everyone does, but he
really
does. He idolised Spike of course and Barry Humphries and many others. I do dozens of charity performances and if I can’t do one for a man I admire and more importantly
like
, whatever the world might think about him, then it would be weird indeed. Especially given the astounding achievements of the Prince’s Trust. In America comedians perform in front of an elected president, which means at least half the country hate them for it. The beauty of a constitutional monarchy heading the state is that they have no politics, so you don’t get the stupid nonsense of Kenny Everett doing Tory Party conferences and
bien-pensant
Labour comedians doing the same for Labour.’
Ben Elton’s relations with the Windsors have had their ups and downs, as has his estimation of the Labour Party, in the light of New Labour and the Blair administration.
fn12
But as a history-loving patriot from another German immigrant family, and an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust, Elton was proud to get the gig of presenting sections of the Royal Variety Performance and indeed the Queen’s Golden Jubilee concert. Some of his subsequent stand-up material was used by the press to depict him as a yob, of course, and he used the
Daily Mail
of all papers to try and set the record straight. ‘I wrote to Prince Charles to apologise for calling the Queen a “sad little old lady” and her husband “a mad old bigot” … I was doing a comedy routine and it was quoted out of context as if it was a diatribe. There’s not much in comedy that can’t be made to look cruel and ridiculous when taken out of context. I’ve been doing that routine about the Royals for years. The point is that in all its dysfunction her family is just like the rest of us … Although the whole principle of monarchy is nutty, I personally believe if you must have a head of state, I would rather have someone who
has
to do the job than who
wants
to do the job. Intellectually there is no argument for the monarchy, but as I always say, if you have to go to a disco with the world’s heads of state, who would you trust with your keys and your handbag? It would be Yer Majesty.’ However, he reasons, ‘The monarchy is absurd and illogical. There’s no moral justification for a single family always providing the head of state. Nevertheless, it has delivered a great deal of stability. We’re fortunate that our Royal Family appears to be made up of decent, caring, flawed but honest individuals. So, while the system is ridiculous, it seems to work.’
It was Elton who wrote and introduced Blackadder’s further royal performance, presenting a tangential military member of the family on
to the stage at the Dominion Theatre, while
Back and Forth
was still airing at the Dome:
ELTON: | Tonight we are celebrating a great British tradition and tradition is something we do very well in Britain. Some of our noblest families go back many, many centuries … and some popped over from Germany a lot more recently. Perhaps our oldest and most celebrated family of all is the Blackadder dynasty and now, representing the current generation of malcontents please welcome from Her Royal Highness’s Regiment of Shirkers: Captain, the Lord, Edmund Blackadder. |
EDMUND: | All right, settle down, settle down. Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen. The world is changing and Her Majesty’s armed forces must change with it. Consider Britain and its position in the world today. At the beginning of the last century just two hundred years ago, Britain kept the peace in a quarter of the entire globe. The sun, they say, never set on the British Empire. Now what have we got? The Channel Islands … The Germans have bought Rolls-Royce. All the newsreaders are Welsh – although that may not be relevant. And most foreigners think that the Union Jack is based on an old dress design for one of the Spice Girls. So what is to be done? Well, the answer, to my mind, is very simple. If we are to re-establish our position in the world, the army must return to its traditional role, the very reason for which it existed in the first place – we must invade France. No no, no no, I’m serious. Our advanced guard of mad cows has already done a superb job. And the French are in disarray. Now is the time for actual occupation. Now you may say, ‘Why France?’ Well that’s a very good question. But I can think of three reasons. Firstly, whenever we try to speak their language they sneer at us and talk back to us in English … God, they are |