Better than Baldrick

In this section, you will find a series of instances that prove you are better than Baldrick. Feel free to use these examples in arguments, to prove that you indeed have more redeeming qualities than Baldrick.

(SOME OF) THE CUNNING PLANS

  • After destroying Dr Johnson's dictionary, Blackadder must find a way to get out of the predicament...
    EB: "...But do go on. Which pages are they?"
    BA: "This is the brilliant bit. You write some new ones."
    EB: Some new ones? You mean rewrite the dictionary? I sit down tonight, and rewrite the dictionary that took Johnson ten years?"
    BA: "Yes." -- 3.2
  • Baldrick's plan to escape from the French prison is:
    BA: "We do nothing."
    EB: "Yep. It's another world-beater.
    BA: "Wait -- I haven't finished. We do nothing until our heads have actually been cut off."
    EB: "And then we spring into action?"
    BA: "Exactly! You know when you cut a chicken's head off, it runs round and  round the farmyard."
    EB: "Yeees..."
    BA: "Well, we wait until our heads have been cut off then we run round and round the farmyard, out the farm gate and escape." -- 3.3
  • Baldrick carves his name on a bullet because he's heard that they say that somewhere there's a bullet with your name on it, and he'd never shoot himself. As Blackadder says, shame. -- 4.1
  • Oh, come on, there are too many plans to put here. Go watch the show, it's funnier than reading this!

THE THOUGHTS OF AN IMBECILE

The Second Series

BA = Baldrick
EB = Edmund Blakadder

  • BA: "Some beans and some beans is four beans." -- 2.2
  • EB: "I mean, look at this, what is it?" He picks up a potato
    BA: "I'm surprised you've forgotten, my lord."
    EB: "I haven't forgotten. It's a rhetorical question."
    BA: "No. It's a potato." -- 2.3
  • BA: "Shall we drink each other's, or stick to our own?" Offering his water to EB and Percy -- 2.3

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The Third Series

BA = Baldrick
EB = Edmund Blakadder
PG = Prince George

  • BA: "Lord Nelson's got a vote."
    EB: "He's got a boat, Baldrick." -- 3.1
  • BA: "When I used to play in the gutter I used to say to the other snipes 'Hello, my name's Baldrick' and they used to say 'Yes, we know. Sod off, Baldrick.' -- 3.1
  • BA: "Well, I've got this big growth in the middle of my face..."
    EB: "That's your nose, Baldrick." -- 3.1
  • EB: "Do you have any ambitions in life apart from the acquisition of turnips?"
    BA: "No." -- 3.1
  • EB: "Baldrick, how did you manage to find a turnip that cost £400,000?"
    BA: "Well, I had to haggle." -- 3.1
  • BA: "Novel or navel, it sounds like a bag of grapefruits to me." -- 3.2
  • EB: "'Once upon a time there was a lovely little sausage called Baldrick, and he lived happily ever after.'"
    BA: "It's semi-autobiographical." -- 3.2
  • EB: "You've burnt the life's work of England's foremost man of letters?"
    BA: "Yup. You did say burn any old rubbish." -- 3.2
  • BA: "I am as stupid as I look, sir, but if I can help, I will." -- 3.2
  • EB: "Baldrick, what have you done?"
    BA: "I've done 'c' and 'd'."
    EB: "Let's hear it then."
    BA: "'Big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in.'"
    EB: "What's that?"
    BA: "Sea."
    EB: "Yes, tiny misunderstanding -- still, my hopes weren't high. What about 'd'?"
    BA: "I'm quite pleased with 'dog'.
    EB "Yes? And the definition of 'dog' is...
    BA: "'Not a cat.'" -- 3.2
  • BA: "I couldn't sleep when I was little."
    EB: "You still are little, Baldrick."
    BA: "Well, when I was even littler, see, we used to live in a haunted hovel. Every night our family was troubled by a visitation from this disgusting ghoul. It was terrible -- first there was this unholy smell, then this tiny, hairy, clammy little creature would materialize in the bed between them. Fortunately I could never see it myself."
    EB: "Yes. Tell me, Baldrick, when you left home, did this repulsive entity mysteriously disappear?"
    BA: "That very day."
    EB: "I think, then, that the mystery is solved." -- 3.3
  • PG: "Anarchist!"
    BA: "Cleaner!"
    PG: "All right, so you've had a wash. That's no excuse. Die, traitor!"
    EB: "That's Baldrick, your Highness, spring-cleaning." -- 3.4
  • EB: "Baldrick, why has half of the front page been cut out?"
    BA: "I don't know."
    EB: "You do know, don't you?"
    BA: "Yes." -- 3.5
  • EB: "Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?"
    BA: "Yes, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made out of iron." -- 3.5
  • EB: "Well, I don't know, do I? It depends on what it is."
    BA: (Getting panicky) "Well I can't tell you what it is unless you want to know, and you said you didn't want to know, and now I'm so confused I don't know where I live of what my name is!"
    EB: "Your name is of no importance and you live in the pipe in the upstairs water closet." -- 3.6
  • BA: "My mother told me to stand up to homicidal maniacs." -- 3.6
  • BA: "Well, my cousin Bert Baldrick, Mr. Gainsborough's butler's dogsbody, says he heard that all portraits look the same these days, since they are painted to a romantic ideal, rather than as a true depiction of the idiosyncratic facial qualities of the person in question." -- 3.6 Actually, this is one of the only intelligent things Baldrick has ever said.

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The Fourth Series

BA = Baldrick
EB = Edmund Blakadder
LG = Lieutenant George

  • LG: "No, sir, that's not supposed to be vomit. It's dabs of light."
    BA: "No, it's vomit."
    LG: "Ah, now why did you choose that?"
    BA: "You told me to, sir."
    LG: "Did I?"
    BA: "Yes, sir. You told me to paint whatever comes from within...so I did my breakfast." -- 4.1
  • BA: "I want a wimple." -- 4.1
  • EB: "I can't believe I've been so stupid."
    BA: "Yes, that is unusual, because usually I'm the stupid one."
    LG: "Yes, and I'm not over-furnished in the brain department." -- 4.1
  • EB: Well, this time I've been the stupidest of all.
    LG: "Oh, now, sir -- I won't have that. Baldrick and I will always be more stupid than you. Isn't that right, Baldrick? Stupid, stupid, stupid."
    BA: "Oh, yes -- stupidy, stupidy, stupidy."
    LG: "We're the stupidest bunch of stupids in the history of stupiditiness." -- 4.1
  • LG: "Bravo -- it's one of the King's Carrier Pigeons!"
    BA: "No it isn't -- that pigeon couldn't carry the king. It hasn't got a tray or anything." -- 4.2
  • At court--a bad place for Baldrick
    EB: "Deny everything, Baldrick."
    LG: "Are you Private Baldrick?"
    BA: "No."
    LG: "But you are Captain Blackadder's batman?"
    BA: "No."
    LG: "Oh, come on, Baldrick -- be a bit more helpful, it's me."
    BA: "No, it isn't." -- 3.2
  • BA: "No, sir, you're as dead as some doo-doos." -- 4.2
  • BA: "Do not despair, sir. All my talk of food was only a dead herring." -- 4.2
  • Trying to save Blackadder from being shot by writing to someone in a letter to George's mother...
    BA: "No, no, someone else."
    LG: "Who?"
    BA: "I don't know."
    LG: "Neither do I."
    BA: "Think, think."
    LG: "No, you think, think!"
    BA: "You think, sir!" (An impossible act for both of them) -- 4.2
  • LG: "Charlie Chaplin, Baldrick. What do you make of him?"
    BA: "Oh, sir, he's as funny as a vegetable that has grown into a rude and amusing shape, sir." Perhaps a turnip? -- 4.3
  • BA: "I'm a Sopwith Camel." -- 4.4
  • BA: "I don't like them doctors. If they start poking around inside me..."
    EB: "Baldrick, why would anyone wish to poke around inside you?"
    BA: "They might find me interesting." -- 4.5
  • BA: "The thing is -- the way I see it, these days there's a war on, right? And ages ago, there wasn't a war on, right? So there must have been a moment when there not being a war went away, right, and there being a war came along, right? So what I want to know is, how did we get from one case of affairs to another case of affairs?" -- 4.6
  • How Baldrick thinks the First World War was started.
    BA: "I heard it started when some chap called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry." -- 4.6
  • EB: "How hurt would you be if I give the honest answer, which is, 'No -- I'd rather French-kiss a skunk'?"
    BA: "So would I, sir." -- 4.6
  • Baldrick's war poems...beware, they are quite stupid.

    "Hear the words I sing,
    War's a horrid thing.
    But still I sing, sing, sing
    Ding a ling a ling."

    The German Guns
    "Boom, boom, boom, boom,
    Boom, boom, boom,
    Boom, boom, boom, boom..."
    EB: "Boom, boom, boom?"
    BA: "How did you guess?" -- 4.6
  • BA: "...a girl actually came up and kissed me."
    EB: "Poor woman -- first casualty of the war." -- 4.6
  • BA: "I remember telling my mum, 'these sacks will be easy to outwit in a battle situation'." -- 4.6