The Blackadder Connection

A friend of mine has recently got the boxed set of Blackadder and we’ve been reliving this Rowan Atkinson classic. We’ve just got to the end of the first series – its the one set in mediaeval times (and actually the least funny). We were watching the final episode (The Black Seal) where towards the end a character called the Duke of Burgundy – The Hawk joins the action.
The actor’s voice was really familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. More bizarrely I kept thinking “it’s guy who does the voiceover on X-Factor” But it couldn’t be could it?

Everyone knows Peter Dickson is the voiceover for X-Factor – but did he really appear with Tony Robinson and Rowan Atkinson way back in 1983?  As ever Wikipedia is a ready friend (if occasionally inaccurate). It answered the question for me and revealed that there was a link from Blackadder to X-Factor.

The link is Patrick Allen. He was a voice artist who sadly died in 2006 but whose voice was very familiar on radio and TV over many years. His was one of those proper old school RP voices with the reassuring resonant authority of old style BBC radio 4. In fact his voice was thought so reassuring that in the 80’s he was given the job of being the voice of Protect and Survive – the Government’s advice on how to survive a nuclear war by building a shelter in your house out of internal doors, plastic bags and rain coats (or something). These announcements were famously sampled by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and used in the 12 inch “Annihilation” (VO from 3’12”) remix of Two Tribes – which was where I first heard Patrick Allen’s voice. One of the quotes was about putting dead people outside the shelter but “remember to tag them first for identification purposes”

But coming back to Blackadder – and this bit is slightly embarrassing for someone who is usually good at identifying voices – I discovered the reason that the Duke of Burgandy’s voice was was so familiar was because he’d been doing all the narration throughout the whole series I’d just watched! It never occurred to me that the narrator could also be in the story. (You can tell I don’t have an acting background).

And the link to X-Factor? Well it’s this: In more recent years Patrick Allen was used to provide quirky VO idents for TV channel E4 when it started in the mid noughties. After his death another voice artist took over the E4 announcements and continued with them in the same voice style – the MVO who took over was Peter Dickson.