We here at The View are massive Blackadder fans, so you can
imagine our excitement when we found a real-life namesake for the fictional
Edmund Blackadder. Forces War Records, a leading genealogy website and one of
our clients, help thousands of people to locate their family in millions of war
records, and to subsequently make sense of the information they find, so it was
fascinating to see the process being applied to the cast of Blackadder.
Once we had received confirmation that all of the characters
had real-life counterparts, the process of excavation began. We were
particularly keen to find photographs of all the characters, and so wrote to
the universities and schools which the namesakes had attended to try to track
them down. Sadly, we were only able to find Lieutenant George, although he does
cut quite a figure in his uniform. Staff, both here and at Forces War Records
trawled The National Archives for more information to flesh out the story, and
give the characters life. We even sent one of our own, Sarah Wright, down there
to gather some key images.
Forces War Records were able to uncover some amazing
information about the lives of the real-life namesakes for the Blackadder cast,
proving that while all the characters shared their surnames and ranks some were
more like their First World War counterparts than others. Both Blackadders were
career soldiers, who rose up the ranks before the war, serving overseas before
fighting in the Somme. Similarly both Lieutenant Georges attended Cambridge,
where they rowed for their colleges, were artists, eventually pilots, and,
tragically, died in the trenches.
From here the characters diverge slightly from their
fictional counterparts – the real Baldrick, although also from humble origins,
was able to read and write, and is listed on the 1901 census as a scholar.
However, the most dissimilar was Captain Darling. The fictional Darling was a
shirker, educated at Ipplethorpe Primary, who had a girlfriend called Doris.
The real Captain Darling was a hero, fighting at most of the major battles;
Mons, Marne, Aisne and Ypres, he was educated at Eton, and married with two
children.
With the story fully researched, and releases drafted,
edited, polished and finally approved, it was time to wait for broadcast day.
Media sell-in had started the day before and so by the time we got to the
office we had acquired a number of national newspapers and soon were busy
clipping out articles, trawling the internet for stories, and tweeting away to
share the good news! Meanwhile Sarah was in London, schmoozing with celebrities
and historians. Between this, she managed to shoehorn in 26 radio interviews
with Tim McInnerny (who played Captain Darling) and Tom Bennington (the amazing
young researcher who uncovered the information), which is amazing, considering
that normally broadcast days average around 10-15.
The pick-up on the story has been incredible and we’ve been
very busy in the office ever since capturing articles in print and online, as
well as social media mentions, which have abounded! All this despite the fact
that our story broke on a very busy news day, shows how strong the story was.
All in all it was a really great validation of all the hard work and effort
which went into creating as well as promoting the story, and we’re pretty proud
of how well the story has done.
 |
by Ellen Whitehead
