To celebrate 25 years of Blackadder we've compiled some of the funniest quotes from the landmark comedy series... "Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words, 'I have a cunning plan', marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation?" Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's classic comedy celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The historical series followed the misfortunes of the scheming Edmund Blackadder and his turnip-eating dogsbody, Baldrick. It was an instant hit in 1983, launching Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Tony Robinson into the TV stratosphere. To celebrate 25 years of Blackadder the original cast and creators will meet up on UKTV G.O.L.D's Blackadder Exclusive: The Whole Rotten Saga at 9pm on October 9. The programme charts the behind-the-scenes story of the show, from early development to its rise as one of Britain's best-loved sitcoms. Blackadder's best bits... Blackadder: "Baldrick, believe me, eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me and this pencil." George: "I'm happy as a Frenchman who's invented a pair of self-removing trousers." Blackadder: (to Baldrick) "You are last in God's great chain. Unless there's an earwig around here you'd like to victimise." Blackadder: "Give the likes of Baldrick the vote and we'll be back to cavorting druids, death by stoning and dung for dinner." Blackadder: "Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?"
Baldrick: "Yes, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made out of iron." Blackadder: "Mrs M, if we were the last three humans on earth, I would be trying to start a family with Baldrick." Blackadder: "Your brain's so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit." George: "I'm thick. I'm as thick as the big print version of the Complete Works of Charles Dickens." Blackadder: "We're in the stickiest situation since Sticky the Stick Insect got stuck on a sticky bun." Blackadder: "I'm as poor as a church mouse that's just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese." Blackadder: "Let's try again. If I have two beans and then I add two more beans, what does that make?"
Baldrick: "Umm... a very small casserole?" Queenie: "If we went around punishing people for being stupid, Nursie would have been in prison all her life." Flashheart: "She's got a tongue like an electric eel and she likes the taste of a man's tonsils." Blackadder: "Baldrick, I would like to say how much I will miss your honest, friendly companionship."
Baldrick: "Thank you, Mr B."
Blackadder: "But, as we both know, it would be an utter lie. I will therefore confine myself to saying simply, 'Sod off and if I ever meet you again, it will be twenty billion years too soon.'" Blackadder:" Bloody explorers, ponce off to Mumbo Jumbo land, come home with a tropical disease, a suntan and a bag of brown lumpy things, and Bob's your uncle, everyone's got a picture of them in lavatory." Blackadder: "This place stinks like a pair of armoured trousers after the Hundred Years War. Baldrick, have you been eating dung again?" Blackadder: "Ludwig was a master of disguise, whereas Nursie is a sad, insane old woman with an udder fixation. All I had to do was kill the one that looked like the cow." Blackadder: "Ha! I laugh at danger and drop ice cubes down the vest of fear." Red Baron: "How lucky you English are to find the toilet so amusing. For us, it is a mundane and functional item. For you it is the basis of an entire culture." Blackadder: "To you, Baldrick, the Renaissance was just something that happened to other people, wasn't it?"
