Blackadder Goes Fortieth
Politics Unpacked
Anna Covell
4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 June 2023
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week in 1983 one of the great political schemers, Edmund Blackadder hit TV screens for the first time. Matt chart's the politics of the classic sitcom, from the power plays to the by-elections, speaking to Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick, and Miriam Margolyes who was a regular on the show.
Plus Columnists India Knight and James Heale discuss whether partygate would have blown over had Boris Johnson fessed up at the very start and whether today's softer work culture is destroying ambition.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is the Redbox Podcast. I'm Matt Charlie, being the best of my Times Radio show. |
| 0:08.7 | You can listen live Monday, Friday, 10 till 1 on your DB Radio, on your Smart Speaker, |
| 0:13.6 | on your Times Radio app, and particularly when a big news story breaks, I don't know, |
| 0:17.4 | somebody's resigned. The Times Radio will always have it live and uninterrupted by, you know, |
| 0:23.5 | the things they do on the other side. Right, coming up on today's episode, 40 years of Black |
| 0:28.4 | Adder, one of my favourite TV sitcoms. And we've been taking a look at the politics of it all, |
| 0:33.8 | touched on politics in every series, really, and really, interestingly, loads of the cast went on |
| 0:39.7 | to do political things. So coming up today, we're going to hear from Tony Robbins, |
| 0:44.2 | Mary Margolis, and dip into the archive of my chat with Richard Curtis, so that's coming up |
| 0:48.2 | just about the politics of Black Adder. But first, as we always do at the end of the week, |
| 0:51.6 | let's take a look at what we learned this week. |
| 0:58.3 | We learned that Nadine Doris didn't want to do this. You know, the last thing I would want to do |
| 1:03.7 | the beat of course, a bio-election in my constituency. And then she did, because she's busy. |
| 1:08.0 | Presenting a show on talk TV and writing a column in the Daily Mail, and I'm an author, |
| 1:13.2 | and to be an MP, you know, come on, something's got to get. And then she didn't, because... |
| 1:19.3 | A girl from Record and Liverpool had something offered to her. We moved by two privileged posh boys. |
| 1:26.5 | And we learned that the guy who won't accept he lost thinks he's the real victim here. |
| 1:30.8 | See, political persecution like something straight out of a fascist or a communist nation. |
| 1:36.6 | No, not him, the other guy. Boris Johnson has apparently quit Parliament as an MP, |
| 1:41.2 | which this guy in Uxbridge wasn't happy about. |
| 1:43.8 | The lefties, the loony lefties of this country will one day see what they've done. |
| 1:49.1 | We are being genocideist. |
... |
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