Tony Robinson

08/03/2010

Blackadder icon and campaigning historian on spending his teenager years short-sighted and in stage musicals

What advice would you give to your 16 year old self, knowing what you know now? Another well known figure opens up...

I was always the smallest and youngest in my class. I was also short-sighted and had a higher voice than anyone else so, where machismo should have been, there was a big pit of despair. I hated school and bunked off a lot and cheated in all my exams.

I had a very weird adolescence. When I was 14 I got a part in the original stage musical of Oliver and the show became very successful. So I spent half of my time in the West End doing shows or having bit-parts in movies, and the other half in a semi-normal school life. I loved performing, I found it easy and enjoyable, and it gave me status, which I didn’t feel I had anywhere else in my life.

I’d definitely tell my young self not to cheat in exams and to learn to work. I often think if I’d gone to university I’d have done everything I did at least 10 years earlier. All the people the public think of as my contemporaries – Paul Merton, Rowan Atkinson – they’re all 10 years younger than me. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s I realised that hard work was actually the means for me to be who I wanted to be.

I would say that for about 23 hours, 57 minutes a day I was thinking about the opposite sex. Had some charitable woman donated her virginity to me I  would have had a much happier adolescence. I assumed any girl who fancied me was clearly crap, so I wasn’t interested in them. I concentrated on the good ones, who rejected me.

If I met my 16-year-old self now I’d think he was fraught with issues. He had a great verbal dexterity, which I think would amuse me, and I’d be impressed by his frames of reference, which is what he’d want me to be. I don’t think I’d like him very much – if I was having a good day I’d maybe feel quite tender about his lack of self knowledge and how unaware he was that his insecurity was showing through his verbal bravado. But he was a pain in the arse.

My youth did mean I could relate to lots of things about Baldrick, Blackadder’s long-suffering man servant. I understood that feeling of being put upon because at 16 I seethed at the injustice of the world. I knew how it felt to be the outsider. Stupidity was a tactic I also used a lot. When I was cornered by teachers asking acidic questions about something I’d just done, I’d feign not being able to understand a word they’d said.

For me, fame was an enormous blessing because I didn’t have to try any more. I’d spent years trying to prove myself and impress people. I was about 40 when Blackadder made me famous and I was living in Bristol and was completely caught up in my kids. So I wasn’t really aware of the impact of the show until I started getting offered great jobs and being approached by strangers. I’m so relieved it didn’t happen until I was 40 – I think if it had happened earlier I wouldn’t have seen it for the blessing it was.

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INTERVIEW: Jane Graham