Does it feel like 20 years since Blackadder finished?
It’s a very odd feeling, like when you think about school – half of you thinks it was a million years ago, and the other can remember such details that make you think it was yesterday. That’s the confused feeling I have about Blackadder. What’s the first thing you remember about it? I remember getting the script very vividly. In those days nobody just sent me scripts, I’d always have to do about five auditions before I got a job. I was at home in Bristol and I heard this thud through the letterbox. I saw a huge brown envelope with the old BBC crest on it, and it was the script. I was out of work at the time and couldn’t work out why anyone would send me a script. There was a brief ‘With compliments’ slip inside, asking me to play the part of Baldrick in a new Rowan Atkinson series. I couldn’t believe they knew who I was. Were you a fan of his already? Yes. I’d always loved what I called ‘Oxbridge humour’, from That Was the Week that Was to Monty Python and Not the Nine O’Clock News, an
