As Blackadder turns 40, Howard Goodall reveals musical secrets of classic comedy

“I thought the stylistic touchpoint was probably Errol Flynn as Robin Hood," Goodall tells Radio Times. "You know, heroic 1950s film version of a person – very grand and pompous and over the top”.

But although the series first aired on 15 June 1983, Goodall in fact wrote the music in 1982 for the pilot The Black Adder, which was recorded in front of a studio audience on 20 June that year but never transmitted.

“It was kind of a first part of the theme everybody knows now," adds Goodall, 65. "When we came to do the actual series a year later, John Lloyd the producer said it felt like it needed a second bit”.

Goodall was already known to its creators Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson (also the star) – they met at Oxford University and together toured student revues in the late 70s. His introduction to TV music came via satirical sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News in 1980. “After about the third programme of the first series Rowan came home one day – I was living in the same house as him in Kilburn – and he said, ‘We want to do a song but we’re rubbish at our instruments, could you come and help us.’ So from that point on I came in and we did a song pretty much every week.

“I continued to work with Rowan on most things and then the idea came up for The Black Adder. They asked if I’d be interested in doing it. Obviously, yes, because I didn’t have much else on, being a young struggling composer in Kilburn!”

After the medieval first series, the show leapt forward in time for its next three series, so how did Goodall approach each dynasty? “It was never straightforwardly ‘of each period’. While [Blackadder II] was slightly Elizabethan in its style and instrumentation, we added elements that were not at all Elizabethan. Slightly wacky, and the singing at the end was accompanied by an electronic rhythm machine.

"And when we got to the Regency period [Blackadder the Third] we had an electric guitar." When I admit that this is my favourite, Goodall says, "It was slightly influenced by Paul Simon’s album Graceland, and the sort of South African groove that became very fashionable at the time. But often what happens with these things is that you the composer think, 'Oh, people will get this reference' and mostly they don’t [laughs]."

Asked for his favourite version, Goodall says, “I get the impression from other people that the final thing I did with just a piano and the bass drum for the last Blackadder in the trenches is the most emotional of all of them. It’s hard not to like that a lot...”

Was that scene, in which the troops go over the top, difficult to get right? “The truth is that when they finished filming it in front of the studio audience, there was a bit of a ‘What do we do with this?’ I remember John Lloyd talking to me about it. I said, ‘What if I were to do something slower and more reflective with the tune?’ And he said, ‘Why don’t you record it and we’ll see if it fits with what we’re trying to do.’

"So I recorded it without having seen [the final visual treatment]. When they put the music onto the slow-mo and the poppies, it was very effective and moving… Also very last-minute-ish! It was like four days after the studio and one or two days before it was transmitted."

That final moment of Blackadder Goes Forth undoubtedly paved the way for the saga's enduring popularity, by making it live long in the memory. And in 2019 the show came fourth in a RT poll of industry experts to find the greatest British TV sitcom.

The importance of getting the music right leads us onto his beautiful, pastoral setting of Psalm 23 for the rural sitcom The Vicar of Dibley. "It’s probably of all my themes the one that’s had the biggest life outside of the programme," he says. "Choirs perform it all over the world, it’s often performed, I’m sad to say, at funerals, and for many people under a certain age it is the tune of The Lord Is My Shepherd that they know, whereas when I grew up there were two or three others.

"It has become the prevalent one for a certain generation of people. That’s obviously because of the amazing relationship with the programme but it’s performed by choirs around the world where they don’t know the programme. That’s a lovely thing to have happened."

So how did that clerical engagement come about? "I went along to chat with the team in a rehearsal. I discussed a lot with them what it was, and because of my background as a chorister, and the fact that I’ve written choral music, I felt relatively at home with that environment. But what struck me about it was-- basically the community is the joke. And no one wanted to make fun of the fact that she was a vicar, that she believed in God or anything like that. So my suggestion was that we go slightly the other way.

"Generally, with the comedy themes I’ve done, I’ve tried not to crack another joke, not to do 'funny' music. The music I feel has to be: if it was a drama of the same subject but with no gags in it, that’s what your music would be.”

He adds, "For me the best theme tunes often come slightly at an angle to the thing you’re doing. You think of MASH, it’s not really what you’re expecting."

Another of his big hit themes is for the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, which for two series had a big, grandiose trumpet and organ piece at the beginning and a "Phil Spector-ish" pop number at the end. A song he wrote for one episode, with lyrics by the show's creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, called Tongue Tied, even got to number 17 in the UK charts.

"It was never my idea that that should be released," says Goodall. "They just did it. I remember going to my publisher who said, 'Did you know we let Danny [John-Jules, who sang it as the Cat] and Craig [Charles, who played Lister] release that single?' I asked, 'How’s it doing?' 'Well go down to HMV, I think it’s in the top 20!'"

But then, in his younger days, Goodall had harboured pop-star ambitions: "When I was a teenager I was in a band that had an album and a record deal that was never particularly successful. It’s a bit of a cliché, when you’re 17 in a band at school, that you want to be a pop star."

It hardly matters. TV themes and incidental music (you'll also know Mr Bean, The Thin Blue Line, The Catherine Tate Show and QI) are just one string to his bow. There are also musicals, from the Ivor Novello Award-winning The Hired Man, co-written with Melvyn Bragg, to Bend It like Beckham. What does he enjoy about writing those?

"I think music and a story can be a fantastic combination. And you can often do things in a musical you couldn’t really do in a play... What you’re always trying to do in a musical is bring another dimension that isn’t there in the thing you inherit. It’s an interesting challenge and when it works it’s a wonderful thing to witness.

"But I do these shows knowing that you’re taking on a big, risky form. Some really break through and become something of great importance to millions of people. But there are so many musicals written at any one time other than those big blockbusters. Some crack through, some don’t and some work on a different level... it’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing." So it would seem – he currently has two in the works!

"When you’re the composer of a musical, and sometimes the lyricist as well, you get much more say what happens with that music than you would if you were writing a film score, where you’re in the service of another team. When you’re doing a musical, the composer has much more clout, and that’s quite nice although it’s more responsibility as well. It’s a two-edged sword."

Then there are his acclaimed documentaries, much loved by Radio Times readers, including How Music Works, The Story of Music and, in 2017, Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution – though he explains that these may become a rarity.

"It’s hard to say who would now commission a programme like that because the landscape has changed. I’m not whinging, it’s just true. In the 80s, 90s and early 2000s when I started making my programmes, BBC2, and after that BBC4 and Channel 4, used to make music documentaries for normal viewing, like you would a history documentary or a natural history programme. That was one of the things they did.

"Now you don’t really have that as the part of the normal diet of those broadcasters. What you have instead are single film documentaries that the big streamers make from time to time, which are on one subject. Persuading Amazon that I want to make a documentary about some other album, the first thing they’d say is, 'Is this going to work in America?' Sgt Pepper is quite unusual in that respect as it’s something I understand because it comes from Britain and I know the people involved and the music and the musical sources incredibly well.

"But my rule always is: it’s not what you like, it’s whether you think there’s something new to say about these things. For example, I’ve always wanted to do something about Songs in the Key of Life, which I think is an absolute landmark. There are documentaries about it but nowadays, trying to get permission to have access to that material is phenomenally difficult. It’s not that they don’t want to give you permission, it’s that they’re being asked every day of the week. It’s more hassle for them to say yes and do deals than it is just to say no."

For the sake of Stevie Wonder fans and pop-doc enthusiasts everywhere, let us hope he is wrong. But in any case, there's no rest for the Goodall: he's currently writing music for a "thrillerish" series.

"When you do a film that’s 110 minutes long, that may be, at maximum, 30 minutes of music. But if you do a modern streamed series like the one I’m doing at the moment, it’s [adopts robot voice] nine hours of content! It’s a huge amount of work. So I’m doing this and nothing else until September [laughs]."

But back to "the birthday boy": Blackadder. It's always a thrill for comedy aficionados to imagine what it was like being in the room where it happened. Howard Goodall doesn't have to imagine – he attended those infamous rehearsals. He says: "I was very friendly with everybody and knew them by then quite well.

But I remember thinking that once the larger inner-core cast got settled, i.e with Stephen and Hugh as very important parts of it alongside Rowan and Tony and Tim, while it was fantastic to have such a group of people working together in one room, it was – I would say, creatively on the verge of chaos, because everybody was suggesting gags the whole time!”

Goodall is clearly proud of his association with such a funny, witty and ultimately moving series, for which he also added incidental music, but only occasionally. As he sums up, "I’ve done a lot of comedy in my life, and my general rule is: if people are cracking gags, get out the way!"

Howard Goodall appears in Blackadder: the Lost Pilot at 9pm Thursday 15 June on Gold. Blackadder: a Cunning Story is at 9pm on Friday 16 June on Gold. Seasons 1-4 of Blackadder can be found on BBC iPlayer. It is also available on BritBox - you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here.

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