When I was given the part of Baldrick, I thought, ''Oh, this is amazing.
''Here am I, an unknown, and at last somebody has recognised
''my great comic genius.''
In fact, it wasn't that at all. Loads of people had turned the part down
and with three or four days to go, in desperation they turned to me.
Because in the pilot there was no comedy in it at all.
There were only about eight lines and they were all ''Yes, sir'', ''No, sir'',
''Three bags full, sir''.
And even in the first episode, I'd got
one or two comic lines, but that was just about that.
He was just the servant,
the kind of everyman servant.
And it was only as the episodes went on,
and I was, after all, surrounded by
the greatest comic writers of their generation,
that gradually his character matured and developed.
And then that whole character was thrown completely out of the window
and we started again with a different character for series two.
So for me as an actor, it was great fun
and interesting and challenging.
In order to make Blackadder's character work in series two,
he needed to be able 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,
as was the case in Blackadder I, was like everyone was brighter than him,
so where's the comedy? There was no subtlety about it, no duality about it.
And so one of the ideas they came up with at the beginning of series two
was that Baldrick should be the stupidest person there had 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 how he was in series two.
Miranda is an extraordinary actress and Richard knew that she was,
and brought her in because of the quality of her acting.
He was so captivated by it. Having said that,
the part that had originally been written
for the Queen Elizabeth character
just was half-baked.
And it was on the first couple of days of rehearsal,
we were all silently tearing our hair out,
because if the Queen Elizabeth character didn't work,
then the show wasn't going to work.
And then midway through that first week,
suddenly Miranda discovered this
young woman who's on the cusp of ponies and sex, as it were,
and is in some ways incredibly sophisticated
and is also the most powerful woman in the world.
And in other ways, is just a spoilt little girl.
I remember the scene when she got it and John Lloyd was leaping up and down
with excitement, going, ''Yes, that's it! That's it, that's it!''
And from that moment that series took off.
And Miranda has this ability
to make what she does look entirely spontaneous.
But it's virtually always really, really thought through.
And it's as though by thinking it through,
she can then allow herself internally
to have a kind of whole fifth of November firework display going on
inside her head. Because she's confident
of the structure that she's already created.
Although we didn't have the 1 2 writers that you would have
for Taxi or Cheers or whatever, actually, you had 1 2 people in the room
who were doing exactly the same kind of thing
that those 1 2 writers on an American show would do.
So, by the end of the week, the whole thing was really lean and spare.
And everything, any ounce of fat on it would have been challenged
and hacked away.
Virtually all of us who were involved in the performance
were writers.
And outrageously, we decided that we knew
just as well if not better than Richard and Ben,
what the words ought to be. So we were constantly challenging
every single gag, the structure of every scene,
we even put additional characters in sometimes.
So, there was a lot of tension between the writers, on one hand,
and the producer on the other hand,
who was as it were, the representative of what the actors were saying.
And it was very healthy and very good,
but it could be quite upsetting sometimes.
I actually learnt to write through being involved
with the people in Blackadder.
Not that I learnt the answers to writing,
but I learnt the questions to ask and that was what the environment was like
in rehearsals, it wasn't much to do with acting.
Often we didn't know what the moves were going to be
or anything like that until it was hastily decided
about 36 hours before we recorded the thing.
All we talked about was the text.
And it's not surprising because virtually everybody in it,
apart from myself, had got degrees in English and Classics
and that sort of thing from Oxford and Cambridge.
It was what they were trained in doing. It was where they felt safe and at home.
So every gag would not only be challenged,
but made slightly more ornate.
And it was almost competitive, it was like,
someone would say,
''All right, don't let's just have a line, let's make it a simile.''
Yes, but let's make it a slightly more complicated simile.''
''Yes, let's make it a complicated simile,
''but one including someone wearing an amusing hat.''
''And boots.'' ''And comic gloves.'' And this and that and that.
Until by the end of the week, what had started out as a line
that had about five words in it would end up like this.
It would end up like, ''That, Baldrick, is the worst message
''since Admiral Lord Nelson flagged up at the Battle of the Nile,
'''Lady Hampton's a virgin,
'''cut my arm off and poke my eye out if I'm wrong.'''
None of that was there in the original script.
It was just all of us being more and more competitive
and adding more to the line as the week's rehearsal went on.
If you think about where Blackadder came from, it is actually
the comedy of adolescent boys trying to impress each other.
And given that it was adolescent boys,
most of whom I would have thought weren't great on the games field,
it was going to come through their banter
and their competitive use of words.
So I don't think it's a surprise
that use of language should have been so strong in Blackadder.
Being the only grammar school boy
amongst all that incredibly talented group of highly articulate performers
and having left school at 1 6 and not having been to university,
there was a sense in which they always felt
very different from me, really rather exotic.
And yet, in a way, not really kind of tuned in to the real world
because they all talked so elaborately.
And I think that probably helped me with Baldrick.
In a way, it doesn't matter to Baldrick
whether or not a hierarchy exists, because they're all up above him,
dancing around in some way or another.
I suspect there was a bit of me that felt like that myself.
I think one of the things that we were always striving for in Blackadder
was more focus, more discipline.
Really to concentrate on every single little joke,
every little scene, every concept.
So that Blackadder I goes hurtling all over the place,
loads of extras, loads of horses, loads of characters.
Series two is reduced from that, but by series three,
that was the time when I really felt that we were focusing
on what we really wanted to do.
Right from the very beginning,
I felt that as performers,
Rowan and I just got each other.
We just knew what each other was doing.
We just knew what the right timing should be.
We just knew how to tee things up for each other.
And I don't think we ever spoke about that.
Or if we did, it was only very lightly. But I know it's there.
And I know that just on the few occasions
that I've performed with Rowan ever since,
in Comic Relief, things like that,
immediately that spark has come up and lifted both of our performances.
I think my favourite series is Blackadder III.
Partly because of Hugh's performance,
but also because I think it's so audacious
to create a six-part comedy series
about a period of history where virtually
none of the viewers can remember anything
about the history of that period.
And my favourite episode would have to be ''Dictionary''.
I think the one-liners are hysterical.
I love Robbie's performance.
And I've got some very, very, very good jokes in it.
The favourite line I had to say
in the whole of all the episodes of Blackadder
was when Rowan said to me, ''Baldrick, do you know what irony is?''
And I said, ''Yeah, it's like goldy or silvery, but it's made of iron.''
I still like that now.
It's so sweet.
I'm not sure how conscious we were at the time
of the epic nature of what we were creating,
Or at least the way people have responded to it as though it's epic.
I guess we probably knew that right at the beginning,
and I'm sure the writers knew it when they were writing it,
but once they'd written it, and because they're such good writers,
all we did was deal with the situations that we were in.
The fact that later on people might say, ''Oh, Baldrick's heroic''
or that Blackadder has become more spare, more haunted,
more sophisticated or whatever, just wasn't there in the rehearsal room.
And if it had been, I think the performances
would have suffered from it.
I think one of the useful things about Baldrick in that series
is that he provides a breathing space.
Everyone else is talking at 900 miles an hour
in the most dazzling vocabulary,
using words that often most of us don't understand,
or think we may understand but aren't quite sure we know what they mean,
and then in comes Baldrick, in a much slower tempo, much less to say.
Whatever he says, you're going to get it.
And I think that helps you to feel comfortable about the series.
Certainly that was how I felt,
being in amongst all those dazzling minds in the middle of rehearsals.
I am so proud to have been in Blackadder.
That's probably why I don't mind, 25 years later,
just pontificating about it. I don't feel like some actors would,
''Oh, I don't want to mention that character.
''I'm in fear of being typecast.'' I don't feel like that at all.
Being in that series was like how I imagine it must be
if you're suddenly dropped into the middle of the Brazilian football team.
When everyone around you is playing the most fantastic football
and you're all right, you can play a bit,
but boy, oh, boy, have you got to up your game
if you're surrounded by those people.
And a lot of the time, being Baldrick,
I didn't say much and throughout that time,
I was just watching what those performers did.
And watching how the writers worked.
And in fact, it was only after Blackadder
that I started writing.
And I've now written, I don't know, 1 6 kids' books, four books for adults.
And I just learned about writing through listening
to what all those people, particularly Richard Curtis,
were doing, how they addressed the problems
of creating comedy.
There are lots of other shows that I've done
that have taken much more time to do,
lots of other shows that have taken more toll on me.
Lots of other shows where I've actually made more money.
But the fact that I'll go to my grave as Baldrick
isn't something that I shy away from.
I just feel, yeah, really proud of that. Really proud.