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<\/p>\nA Blackadder script that never got made and which only a handful of people have ever read? Surely it\u2019s the ultimate Christmas gift for the comedy fan who has everything.<\/p>\n
Blackadder in Bethlehem was written to be the first Christmas special of the Rowan Atkinson sitcom that ran for four series on BBC1 between 1983 and 1989. The script has never been published, except for an extract in Jem Roberts\u2019s 2012 book The True History of the Blackadder. Now its creator, Richard Curtis, has put his first draft up for auction to benefit the children\u2019s education charity Theirworld.<\/p>\n
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Richard Curtis with the script for Blackadder in Bethlehem<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was begun in 1988 and then abandoned for fear it would cause too much offence,\u201d Curtis explains in a single typewritten page. He and his co-writer, Ben Elton, instead got working on another idea, Blackadder\u2019s Christmas Carol, which was broadcast in December 1988. Curtis never even sent Elton his draft at the time. He describes it now as \u201ca strange mixture of Fawlty Towers and Life of Brian\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Ben Elton: Blackadder, The Young Ones and getting roasted on Newsnight<\/a><\/p>\n Did they make the right choice? Elton has said that Blackadder\u2019s Christmas Carol was one of his biggest disappointments on the show, writing, \u201cThat\u2019s my least happy memory on the Adder\u201d in his recent memoir What Have I Done?. He loved his and Curtis\u2019s script but \u201cabout 50 per cent of it had been f***ed up in the rehearsal room \u2026 It could have been so much better.\u201d<\/p>\n Might Blackadder in Bethlehem have been better, once developed (Elton and Curtis always rewrote each other\u2019s drafts) and performed by the cast, headed by Atkinson as Blackadder and Tony Robinson as Baldrick? A preliminary reading of the very enjoyable Blackadder in Bethlehem reveals that some of it is close to fully formed, with barbs aplenty from the rapacious innkeeper Blackadder to his skivvy Baldrick, turfed out of his usual lodgings in the manger when Mary and Joseph arrive at the otherwise fully occupied inn.<\/p>\n Some of it is deliberately sketchy, as when Curtis writes in the stage directions \u201cThen perhaps on with the proper plot\u201d. There is no role for Tim McInnerny\u2019s character Percy, a regular in the first two series, although the script describes the hotel assistant, Rachel, as \u201cthe female Percy substitute\u201d. An exasperated Blackadder threatens to cut out Baldrick\u2019s tongue with scissors \u2014 a heftier punishment than Basil Fawlty ever dished out to Manuel.<\/p>\n
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