The True History of the Blackadder Read Online Free PDF Page A

of Oxford’s organs, and trying to design a synthesiser of his own.
    So the explosion of comic invention Richard Curtis witnessed that Thursday evening had been bottled up for quite a long time. ‘I saw this little advert in the university newspaper saying, you know, “We’re thinking of getting a comedy revue together,”’ Atkinson recalls, ‘so I thought I’d beetle along, because I felt as though I had an interest. And Richard was there … So that was our first meeting – I said very little, and I’m sure Richard said a great deal.’
    I T ’ S IN M Y B LOOD AND IN M Y S OUL
    There was, of course, a whole pantheon of future stars and media darlings at Oxford alongside Curtis and Atkinson in the mid-seventies. Older boy Mel Smith had just progressed from the Oxford Revue and OUDS to a budding career in theatre, and the new blood included Tim McInnerny and Helen Atkinson-Wood, with most of the rest of the Radio Active team, Angus Deayton, Michael Fenton Stevens and Philip Pope, arriving a year or two afterwards. McInnerny was one of the brightest stars of OUDS, but couldn’t shake off a natural comic flair, and became one of Curtis’s favoured performers – at least, for any sketch that wouldn’t have suited Atkinson.
    Atkinson-Wood similarly filled her time with comedy performing when she wasn’t studying Fine Art at the Ruskin School, and came from the same part of the world as McInnerny, being from a well-to-do family in Cheadle Hulme, head girl of her school and crazy aboutponies, despite a near-fatal riding accident at the age of sixteen. fn2
    Helen recalls: ‘I arrived a year after them. I was doing a show called The Female Person’s Show in my very first term – written by Marcy Kahan – which Richard saw, and asked if I would like to come and audition for the revue. It’s fair to say that even at that point, Rowan was becoming a legendary comedy figure, because there was nobody else like him … Tim and I also did serious drama – we were in a production of Measure for Measure at the Oxford Playhouse – so, very illustrious productions, alongside horsing around with our pals.’
TIMOTHY MCINNERNY
B ORN : 18 September 1956, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire
Born to William and Mary McInnerny in a corner of what is now part of Greater Manchester, Tim McInnerny’s background may be a degree less highfalutin than his Harrovian and Etonian colleagues, but a desire to perform was clearly in the blood – Lizzie, his younger sister, is also a successful star of stage and screen. While others in this history went through the public-school system, Tim graduated from grammar school, the Marling School in Stroud, before earning his place at Wadham College, Oxford. He paused for a year’s backpacking around the world (and being held up at gunpoint by a gang of drunken Italian policemen, for a laugh) before launching himself into the Oxonian theatre scene in 1975.

    Rowan couldn’t hog all the limelight at the Oxford Revue shows, and Curtis had plenty of sketches which wouldn’t have suited him anyway –many of them, perhaps unsurprisingly, involving love and relationships, including the clever ‘Prompt’, originally penned for Tim and Helen.
TIM:
We thought we’d just slip back on and have a private word … First perhaps we should get introduced. Her name’s Helen.
HELEN:
And his name’s Tim.
TIM:
And together we make Tim and Helen. ( Smiles .) We thought we might, I don’t know why, just, you know, talk about how we first met, how we fell in love … Right, well, Helen, you start away.
HELEN:
OK. Um … Prompt.
PROMPT:
( Off ) I don’t know what to say really.
HELEN:
I don’t know what to say really, I’m not very good at … Prompt.
PROMPT:
Improvisation.
HELEN:
Improvisation. Prompt.
TIM:
Come on, Helen. Think!
HELEN:
What do you mean, ‘Come on’? … You just don’t seem to care at all any longer, Tim.
TIM:
Oh I do care, Helen, for heaven’s sake, I … Prompt?
    All the young sketch