Sir Tony Robinson - ‘I learned comedy as a defence mechanism’

Recorded with a live audience in Cambridge, this captivating conversation delves deep into the life and career of a cultural force of the last half-century. Known of course for his iconic role as Baldrick in Blackadder, Sir Tony's sharp intelligence and dry humour have had a formative influence on generations. In this candid discussion, he opens up about the unexpected turns and profound challenges that have shaped his extraordinary journey as an actor, presenter, documentary maker and writer. You'll hear his deeply personal reflections on fatherhood, insights into the creative process behind his recently announced novel, and the powerful lessons learned from a lifetime of experiences, both public and private. Prepare for an engaging, wise, and moving conversation that explores the transformative power of vulnerability and the importance of finding meaningful connection. This is a unique opportunity to hear a national treasure like never before. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Intro 00:45 Tony Robinson's Early Life and Career 03:13 Fatherhood and Family 04:55 Writing and Publishing a Novel 10:50 The Impact of Blackadder 13:16 Challenges and Conflicts in Blackadder 16:33 Height and Personal Insecurities 20:42 Childhood and Adolescence Struggles 22:41 Growing Up in the Shadow of WWII 24:49 The Ups and Downs of Gambling 27:28 Early Career and Poker Lessons 29:29 Child Actor Earnings and Capitalism 34:23 Dealing with Alzheimer's in the Family 37:03 Reflecting on Personal Failures 44:56 Finding Meaningful Relationships 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: “The trick is to minimise when you’re losing.” “If someone gouges the oak tree when it's young, it's almost obscene. When you look at it, it's horrible. But gradually, as the oak grows older and wider and bigger, and the bark becomes more twisted and more sophisticated, that gouge becomes not only a thing of beauty, but probably the most beautiful and defining thing about that oak tree." 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Sir Tony’s new book: The House of Wolf Elizabeth’s upcoming one-off show at Cadogan Hall on 21 Sep for her new novel One of Us: ⁠⁠https://www.fane.co.uk/elizabeth-day⁠ Elizabeth’s Substack: ⁠https://theelizabethday.substack.com/⁠ Join the How To Fail community: ⁠https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 📚 WANT MORE? Stephen Merchant, on height, stand-up and turning 50 https://listen.sonymusic-podcasts.link/ighNsQn7 Richard Osman, on professional failure, food addiction and his fear of joining in https://link.chtbl.com/oo_ct3h3 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: ⁠www.elizabethday.org⁠ Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Elizabeth and Sir Tony Robinson answer YOUR questions live in Cambridge in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: ⁠howtofailpod.com⁠ Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: ⁠howtofailpod.com⁠ Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Live Show Engineer: Will Kontargyris Sound Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Suhaar Ali Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at ⁠sonymusic.com/podcasts⁠ To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email ⁠[email protected]⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠podcastchoices.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

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• 0:45Elizabeth Day?

  to start your free trial. That's Shopify.co.uk/fail. Go to Shopify.co.uk/fail today to hear your first...

• 1:07Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome to this super special episode with living legend Sir Tony Robinson. This was recorded with a live audience from the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. Enjoy. Oh my goodness, it's so amazing to be in Cambridge, in the Corn Exchange. The last time I was in this building, I was sitting my finals, and the Corn Exchange still appears in all of my stress dreams. So I'm so thrilled that you're here and we can reclaim the memories together. Thank you, thank you, thank you for turning up. So, my guest tonight has had a remarkably varied career as an actor, presenter, documentary maker, public educator, writer and political activist.

• 1:54Elizabeth Day?

  I'm pretty sure that his sharp intelligence and wry humour have had a formative influence on almost everyone in this auditorium. Whether it was as Baldrick, the comedy stooge in Blackadder who always claimed to have a cunning plan, or fronting the archaeological hit Time Team on Channel 4 for some 20 years, or creating, writing and starring in the children's TV show Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, which I personally loved. Sir Tony Robinson has been an integral cultural force over the last half-century. Born the year after the Second World War ended, Sir Tony grew up as an only child in North East London.

• 2:38Elizabeth Day?

  His first part, aged 13, was as a member of Fagin's gang in the original production of the musical Oliver. After drama school, he spent years as a jobbing actor before being cast alongside Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder in 1983. Since then, Sir Tony has presented multiple documentaries, launched his own history podcast, Cunning Cast, written 18 children's books and won a BAFTA. Alongside this professional success, he's made time for charity work, most notably as ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society. Both his parents developed dementia in older age. In 2013, he was knighted for his public service.

• 3:22Elizabeth Day?

  "I feel my biggest achievement, though, is being the father of two fabulous children", he says. "Nothing else I have done in my life even comes close to that." Cambridge, please welcome to the stage the one and only Sir Tony Robinson. Oh, Sir Tony, thank you so much for coming on How To Fail. Not at all. It really struck me, writing that introduction, how you've had such an impact on multiple generations. My dad is a huge fan because of Blackadder, I'm a huge fan because of Maid Marian, and we're all huge fans here tonight, and I can't wait to get into your failures with you.

• 4:05Elizabeth Day?

  But I wanted to end on that quote about fatherhood. Yeah. What do you think fatherhood has taught you?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Oh, I think, you know how when somebody hasn't got kids and one of them gets pregnant and they say, well, actually, we're going to be very firm when we have the kid. We're going to keep our own space.

• 4:29Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  And I'll probably go back to work after five days. And all that stuff comes out. But what nobody realises until they have the child, like that one.

• 4:44Elizabeth Day?

  I know, I'm so thrilled there's a child here.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  What no one realises is that they will love you more than anyone will ever love you. You know that moment when the kid is born and it just looks up into your eyes and it goes, wow, you're just the absolute greatest. And that is such an enormous present. And then ever after that, I think, there's something that's sort of slightly narcissistic about it, is that you learn so much about your own development from seeing how your own child develops and the changes in your relationship with the child and the way that both child and adult are constantly negotiating with each other. I'm going to stop now, it's getting a bit tedious.

• 5:29Elizabeth Day?

  No, it's beautiful.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  But you know what I mean? I just find, I've found the whole thing, of course, a load of it was ghastly, of course it was. I'm not being unrealistic about it, but it's so exciting.

• 5:40Elizabeth Day?

  And now you have grandchildren, you have two granddaughters, and your daughter, Laura Sheppards-Robinson, is a very successful novelist. And you yourself have written a novel, Sir Tony. Ah! Which has just been announced, The House of Wolf. What's that process been like for you? Did you feel competitive with your daughter?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I didn't feel, no, no, no, no. I remember saying to my literary agent, whatever you and I do, actually, Laura is more important than me. What she does is, you know, as a dad, what I do pours into insignificance. Compared with what she's gonna do, it was so great. Can you imagine, you know, to have a daughter who suddenly becomes this hugely successful writer? What was the question?

• 6:24Elizabeth Day?

  The question was about you writing your novel.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I was just talking about hers, yeah. What was the process like? Ah, well, it was weird.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Lockdown, I said to myself, I want to have a crack at writing the novel that I've always wanted to write. I'd written loads of stuff, but never a novel. And I've always been fascinated by Alfred the Great. You know how, like, the story of Alfred and burning the cakes? And I remember as a kid, not really getting it. There was that image that you saw on the front of the Lady Bird book of this really grouchy peasant and Alfred looking all a bit der. And it was about the fact that he had retreated from the Vikings, goes into this peasant hut. This old peasant woman says to him, while I go out and get the firewood, will you look after the cakes? He says, yes.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  She comes back, he's deep in thought and all the cakes are burnt. And I remember thinking, it's a great image, but what's it all about? What does it mean? And then a bit later, I understood that he was the youngest of five kids. His dad was King of Wessex. He was never meant to be king at all. By the time he became king, the whole of Wessex had gone completely, it was wrecked. And yet he managed to turn it around, defeat the Vikings, become a king who reformed our currency, our legal system, our architecture. He was, to my mind, one of the greatest kings. He was the guy who really sort of started England. And I wanted to address that.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Contradiction about the fact that he just didn't, he wasn't trained to do it. And I was also, as I say, fascinated by this weird story. So I wanted to knit all that together. And I, and during lockdown, I had five or six chapters. When it was over, I went to a literary agent. And he said, wow, I really think there's something in this. Let's pitch it to some publishers. And on the Thursday, he pitched it to 12 publishers. By the following Tuesday, 10 publishers had said they wanted to publish it. Which was like, just like a dream come true. And then it went to auction, which is like, oh, I mean, you know.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I'm afraid I don't know, Tony, but. Oh, sorry about that. I love how excited you were by it. Man, I was so excited because like I, I was going around all these people like Random House and, you know, publishers that I'd only just kind of heard of Penguin and stuff. And they were pitching themselves to me about what they would do if we let them publish the novel. So eventually I went to Little Brown, who have turned out to be the most honestly great, great publishers, along with my agent, Anthony, Anthony Topping. So I then had about three weeks where my head was like about this size, you know.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  All I had to do now was write a whole book and everything would be fine. But the thing is, I write by hand. I always have and I've, I've never wanted not to write by hand. My wife and I decided we would go over to Spain for three months. I'd got a few jobs to do, which I could like fly back and do, but all the rest of the time I would be out in Spain writing. We drove down through France with our little dog. And the first service station in Spain.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Someone broke into the car and nicked all the stuff I had so far written.

• 10:08Elizabeth Day?

  No.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And it was, you know, it was by hand. And it wasn't, it wasn't ju— I mean, the first five or so chapters were at home, but the rest of it that I'd written since then had all gone. But even worse than that, all the research had gone.

• 10:24Elizabeth Day?

  Oh my goodness.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Because I'd just written it by hand. And I plunged into such a massive depress— depression. I mean, I know you've been through this before with other interviews, but saying that, my heart still goes. But I just had to get on with it. And what I realised was, and this is really weird, the chapters that I'd lost, I was able to write again very quickly. Somewhere inside this weird thing we call a brain, there is this thing that literally stores stuff. And I was able to write very quickly. But that was hard, hard, hard, and I lost a lot of confidence for a lot of time.

• 11:03Elizabeth Day?

  Oh my god, I mean, I feel like we've done the podcast now. That was the most extraordinary failure that turned into a realisation of the depth of your talent, maybe. But that also happened to Gillian Cooper, a very similar writer.

• 11:16Elizabeth Day?

  She, she lost the manuscript for Riders, I think, on the 22 bus in London. And she said the same thing. When she rewrote it, it just, it came to her and it was almost better. Your sort of, your brain is redrafting. But I think the thing that strikes me most about that story is the sweet innocence of your enthusiasm and excitement that people would actually be interested in publishing your novel. And, and even though you were immensely successful, I feel like you've never lost that sense of excitement and disbelief almost. And I remember reading that when you got the part in Blackadder, let's do the Blackadder bit now. You, part of the reason that you loved it so much and you were kind of surprised you got the part

• 12:00Elizabeth Day?

  was because you got this sense of belonging with these kind of Oxbridge types who you didn't feel that you fitted in with. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels like I got the part by chance. I got this letter on the Thursday through the Post saying we would like you to be in Rowan Atkinson's new show, in the pilot for Rowan Atkinson's new show. Now, if you get a script on the Thursday when rehearsals start the following Monday, you know you are not the first choice. In fact, I think there was something like nine other people who said that they didn't want to play Baldrick. Because honestly, the part was only about eight lines long and none of them were gag lines. But I had always loved that kind of, what I thought of as Oxbridge comedy, from That

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Was the Week That Was, in the, what would that be, oh, it's the 60s, wasn't it? Through to John Wells and John Bird and John Fortune and then Monty Python and Forty Towers. They all seemed to me so golden, so wonderful. And I always felt there was a part of me who really got that stuff. As a performer, I really got that stuff. And like actors do, I wrote dozens of letters saying, you know, "I'm like you, can I be in your thing?" And when I got this letter saying we would like you to be in it, it didn't matter to me that it was only eight lines. I just thought, I believed that if I could be among that group of people, they would get me.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  And it worked, it was just incredible. From the first morning that I walked in, I just felt at home. It was magic, magic, magic.

• 13:46Elizabeth Day?

  It's extraordinary to think of the seismic influence that Blackadder had and still has, given that it was four seasons. And the last one, which I know so many of you will have seen as I did, was set against the backdrop of the First World War. And probably has done more than any other piece of popular television to shape our understanding of the Great War. Was part of the reason there was never a season five was because it was impossible to follow that?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  No, it was mostly because most of the people in it weren't talking to each other by then.

• 14:18Elizabeth Day?

  Really? Tell me more, Tony.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Well, that's a slight exaggeration. But I mean, the same was true with the Pythons, wasn't it? You get a lot of incredibly bright people, very ambitious, very articulate, very opinionated young people in the same room when they have some success behind them, but not a huge amount of success, have an enormous amount of ambition. Often, I must say, when I say ambition, not so much like, you know, they're gonna be Brad Pitt or something, or even, you know, drive a Ferrari, but ambition for the work. You get them all in the same room, which is like a cooking pot, always.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  By the end of the first series, it's very difficult to hold all those people together. And it really took many, many years before everybody was still mates again. And I know that was true with the Pythons as well.

• 15:25Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. Do you hate Rowan Atkinson? I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  No, I say that that pause was not comic timing about irony. That pause was because I feel so soft about Rowan. I wouldn't have been sitting here now, talking to you, had it not been for Rowan's artistic generosity. If you think about it, he was like at the top of the pyramid. I come in, I'm 38, I'm 10 years older than all that lot. But nobody knows who I am. I've just got the role as a servant. And Rowan and I immediately understood each other. Work-wise, we just knew. We knew the rhythms, it was always

• 16:16Speaker 01

  You know, we just knew it, we just got it. And work-wise, we were very, very close. Not so much socially, because by that time, being that much older, I had kids, I was back in Bristol. So I didn't see them too much out of work. But Rowan's generosity was about the fact that he gave me space to play those rhythms and he gave me permission to have those cutaway shots, which meant that he would work really hard doing those long gags, and I would get the laugh. Now, there aren't many people who, in his position, who would have allowed that to happen. But what, going back to that thing about for those people, work was all the all-important thing.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Roe is still like that. All he cares about is is the work. And if he has to sacrifice the applause and pass the baton to the other person, he will do so. And and that generosity actually, you know, gave me the glorious career I've had. So it, forgive the pause. It's not that I think he's a git, because I don't.

• 17:25Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialized treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's exposure and response prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 18:10Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 18:26Elizabeth Day?

  Your first failure, wait for it. In Tony's words, "I failed to grow tall."

• 18:35Elizabeth Day?

  Does this actually feel like a failure to you?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  In many ways, yeah. And I think I still carry it around with me. I think what first set me off on this was there was a place which used to be called the Acton Hilton. It was actually the rehearsal, the BBC rehearsal rooms, over five floors, and the top floor was a restaurant where all the different actors from all the different shows, even if you didn't know them very well, would meet up and we would get friendly. And this is like, I was I was in the lunch queue with Victoria Wood.

• 19:05Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, my God.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And we got talking. And she said to me, you know, "We'll never play Romeo and Juliet because I'm too fat to be Juliet and you're too small to be Romeo." And you know, it kind of hit me like a bolt from the blue, and yet it was so obviously true, that although both she and I had all those feelings, all those emotions, carried all that weight that Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet had, there was no way that they were, that we were ever going to be given those parts. And it, it took me back to my feelings at school, and just all those humiliations. And that kind of

• 19:51Speaker 01

  thing is still there. This is very weird. I've never, I've never talked about this out loud, because, well, I think you'll understand why. Nowadays, you don't pick on people's looks, do you? It's like, it's kind of a new understanding over the last ten or fifteen years. You don't deride people for what they look like. There is a blind spot about men's height. And the shorter blokes here will understand exactly what I mean. And you kind of don't want to talk about it, because, you know, what are you

• 20:32Speaker 01

  going to get back when you say that? But you look at Love Island. Every woman who is asked what bloke they want, they will always start by saying, I want a tall man. And then everyone, everyone else will laugh in collusion. If you look at those kind of, the Bleeding Hearts comments, exactly the same. Smart women who wouldn't pick out the fact that they didn't want, I don't know, didn't want to be married.

• 21:02Elizabeth Day?

  With a red-haired man, or like a, yes.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Or a Jew, or a blind person, or anything else, will quite, will laugh with their friends and say, oh god, he's got to be taller than me.

• 21:14Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  I just, it really pisses me off, really, to be honest.

• 21:19Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, I completely...

• 21:20Speaker 01

  My wife said, "Don't get cross when you talk about this."

• 21:22Elizabeth Day?

  Do. Your anger is welcome here, because I think it's an extremely good point. And actually, I've had two men on the podcast before, who are very, very tall, Richard Osman and Stephen Merchant, and they said the same thing. They get it the other way.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:38Elizabeth Day?

  Where you might think, "Oh, you know, pass me the tissues complaining about your height." But they said that people quite often comment on their height in kind of an insulting, slightly jokey way.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:49Elizabeth Day?

  And that's still acceptable.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:51Elizabeth Day?

  Which it shouldn't be. Do you still get comments on it?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Well, yes, I do, but kind of as a performer, I've managed to turn it around in some ways. And now it's, you know, it's part of my definition as a performer. Why, how did I learn the comic timing for Baldrick? I think a lot of it had to do with the defence mechanism in the classroom of the... You know, going back to what I was saying about Rowan and I. The teacher would say something and I would go, "Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, puff." Just as Rowan, who was a chronic stutterer, would have used a very similar defence mechanism to cover up from his stuff.

• 22:35Elizabeth Day?

  So, as a child, being the recipient of these mean comments at school, was there anyone that you confided in? Because I know that you were an only child, you were your parents' only child. Did you tell them?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  No, no, I never learnt to confide about hurt. I didn't, I didn't, it sounds mad, doesn't it? "I didn't know you could." So I just developed whatever weaponry I could as a young child to push away that hurt. And of course, when it came to adolescence, and I had to confront the fact...

• 23:12Speaker 01

  That I wanted to court girls and that being a short man, I was by definition funny and not someone who most girls would want to be associated with because my height would rub off on them. That was very, very difficult. And you know, if I could live my adolescence again, it would be to do exactly what you said and seek out people who I could share this with because it's not, you know, in the great scheme of things, it's not the worst thing in the world. It's not Syria or Gaza, is it? It's a little boy who's hurt and needs to find a vocabulary.

• 23:51Elizabeth Day?

  Oh gosh, I really feel for your younger self.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I was also, I was the youngest child in my class, short sighted, the smallest, the worst at games. Again, it's, you know, so what in a way, but it wasn't, it certainly was never recognised. In retrospect, I think I had quite a tough time with myself, you know.

• 24:16Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  And although I didn't, I didn't realise it at the time, I don't think, I didn't even realise what hurt was, you know, going back to you saying, were you hurt? I didn't know.

• 24:28Elizabeth Day?

  Well, you probably didn't have the language that we have now around trauma. And also because you are being raised in the shadow of the Second World War, you probably felt, well, this is small fry compared to what my parents might have gone through.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think my parents would have thought that. My parents loved me to bits, but I don't think that they would have seen what we've just been discussing as a serious an issue as getting good grades in my O levels, for instance.

• 24:55Elizabeth Day?

  Just quickly on this failure, you have spoken about it being a defence mechanism, performance and comedy. So when you found yourself on stage aged thirteen in the first ever production of Oliver, was there a level of self-acceptance then?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think I was most at home from the moment I was an actor. And if you think about it, those kids in Oliver were cast because they were little.

• 25:23Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  You know, you'd got to look younger than you were. We'd all got to look cute. And I spent this bizarre four years after Oliver where half the time I was in the A-stream of a grammar school, the other half of the time I was going off to do bit parts in movies and on telly, just because I was little. And at school, I felt less than, to use, you know, kind of today's cliche. But in the theatre, I was just alive. I was just there. And I think I still feel that to this day. I mean, here, talking to you now, it's not scary for me.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Just before we came on, I just did that cha thing, you know, to make sure I was centred. But just having that little five-minute warm-up with you beforehand. And we were both giving each other, sharing with each other those kind of friendly codes about like being on stage and just kind of patter. We knew it would be all right, and I knew I would be in the place where I feel safe. And I knew this audience wouldn't turn on me, will you?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  You know, and all that, all that, I think, comes about from the height thing too. So there is a, there's a sort of huge upside about all that.

• 26:42Elizabeth Day?

  Your second failure, which is a very intriguing one. I failed to win at Texas Hold'em. Not the Beyoncé song, I'm imagining, but the actual poker game. Okay, tell us about this.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  So from about the age of 16, I loved gambling.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  I failed my maths O level, which was mad because I was the school bookie.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  I always knew that if someone came up to me and said, "I want to put two bob each way on Seabird the second at seven to two," I would know immediately how much I had to give them if they won, because seven to two is three and a half to one, so...

• 27:30Elizabeth Day?

  You've lost me, Tony, sorry.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Stay with me. Three, two bobs is six bob, plus the half is, makes it seven bob, plus a quarter for the place, quarter for the, of, seven bob is one and nine, so that's eight and nine, plus the original stake, is twelve shillings and nine pence.

• 27:47Elizabeth Day?

  Obbs, obbs.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that may not be right now, it's a long time since I've done that stuff in my head, but isn't it absurd that I failed my maths O level, even though I had enormous pleasure in doing that kind of thing? And when I went to drama school, by the, I was, I only, I went when I was like seventeen and a day, and there were a lot of older boys there, so they were always going down the betting shop, which I wasn't even supposed to at seventeen. So I learnt a lot about bookies, I learnt how to play poker. And on Friday nights, we used to go down to one of our teacher's houses, and his name was Eric Thompson, and Eric was at that time, he had created the English version of Magic Roundabout.

• 28:33Elizabeth Day?

  He's Emma Thompson's dad.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  This is Eric Thompson, and Emma was seven years old at the time when we would be playing poker, and she would go round and sit on our laps, and look at the cards and signal to her dad if he thought we'd got good cards.

• 28:47Elizabeth Day?

  This is the best story ever.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  And you can't, you know, you can't tell off a seven-year-old, can you?

• 28:54Speaker 01

  So, and I got very good at poker. I won, let's say, two-thirds of the evenings, and I perceived of myself as a really good poker player. And I played, you know, every other Friday night maybe, and most of the times I won. And the trick with a poker player is knowing you're not always going to win, but the skill is to minimise when you're losing and maximise when you're winning. Couple of years after I left drama school, I won a scholarship to be a theatre director at what's now the MAC, the Midlands Arts Theatre in Birmingham. It then had its own professional theatre company, the Midlands Arts Theatre Company, and I trained to be a professional theatre director when I was there.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  And while I was there, a friend said to me, "There is a professional poker game in this room off the bullring. I could get you into it." And I thought to myself, "This is it. I'm earning twenty quid a week. If I, on average, double it, you know, over the course of six months, that's like twice my earnings." So I went there, they were playing Texas Holden, which was a game I knew backwards and I knew all the odds and everything. I played and on the first night, I lost twenty quid, so that's a week's wages. So I thought, "That's all right, I've minimised my losses."

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Second week I went, I lost another twenty quid. Breathe in deeply, go back the third week, I lost forty quid. And at that moment, I knew I wasn't as good as I thought I was. I was maybe quite a good amateur poker player, but in no way would I ever be a professional. And, you know, the thing about being a professional gambler, which I thought I would always be if I wasn't an actor, it was kind of so sexy, wasn't it? It didn't matter, I didn't, you know, I could be a James Bond-type gambler in a casino, I could be dodgy with a brown mac in a betting shop.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have minded as long as I could do it. Suddenly, all that had gone and I had to play, I had to face up to the fact that I was a failure as a gambler.

• 31:13Elizabeth Day?

  So you come face to face with who you actually are, rather than who you might have been slightly pretending to be, albeit with a foundation of talent. I'm very interested in your relationship with money, more generally, because growing up, there wasn't a lot of it, but you must have been very aware of the value of it when you started earning aged thirteen.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  I don't think I was because I didn't have anything to spend it on other than sweets and consulate cigarettes.

• 31:43Elizabeth Day?

  Wait, were you smoking at thirteen?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, we all did because we got money, you know. I earned ten pounds a week when I was in Oliver. And this is when I learnt about capitalism. It became the biggest hit that there had been for so many years in the British theatre. So we had to get understudies in. They were paid eight pounds a week. And then they got the second tranche of understudies in and they were paid six pounds a week. People wanted to be in it because they wanted to be associated with its success. But that meant that the people with the money were able to pay them less. But, yeah, my dad looked after my money and looked after it very honourably,

• 32:28Speaker 01

  which a number of parents of child actors didn't at that time. And I got like an extra five bob a week. But at that age, how... I keep talking about an old currency, don't I? I do still think in old currency. There was nothing for me to spend it on but fags. And we all felt so cool. You know, we could stand outside the stage door with these Rothman cigarettes, sometimes with long cigarette holders going "Mwah".

• 32:59Elizabeth Day?

  I'm sure you were terrible.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  With sherbet lemons in our mouths at the same time.

• 33:01Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  That was really all there was to spend the money on. And then when I was seventeen, my dad said... I didn't earn that much money. I was never a child star. I was a child actor and like child actors today, the majority of them don't get that much money. But there was enough when I passed my driving test for me to buy a car. And that was, you know, that was the present, apart from the experience of having been a child actor.

• 33:25Elizabeth Day?

  Have you ever worried about not having enough money?

• 33:27Speaker 01

  All the time. My dad was brilliant about that. My dad was an administrator by trade. And he was always... He wanted me to be an actor. But at that time, there were so many actors going bust. Because, as you know, I don't know if they could still call it, but we had to pay tax a year behind on Schedule D. And if you spend all that money... When the tax bill comes around, you go bust. And he was always terrified that I would do that.

• 33:57Elizabeth Day?

  Can you remember a point in your professional life where you got to the stage and you thought, "I don't need to worry about money anymore. I can see my bank balance and I'm okay."

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was funny actually. It was about the second series of Blackadder. It was when, because I think Time Team had started by that. And suddenly there were the VHSs. And they were flying off the shelves. And I was just putting the money in my current account. And my bank manager said to me, "Do you realise that you could at least put it into an account that gave you interest? And shouldn't you get an accountant?" Really, I was that naive about the whole thing. And I did. And my accountant, who, I just very luckily turned out to have the accountant from heaven. And I'm still with the same accountant all these years later.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  And he just kind of talked me through the whole thing. And I realised I was in the process of earning more money than I could legitimately spend. And that was absolutely great. Yeah, what a wonderful present that is. You know, going back to that thing about Rowan. Thank you, Rowan, for that. Thanks for the money, Rowan.

• 35:10Elizabeth Day?

  So what do you think your failure as a Texas Holden player has taught you?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  I think you hit the nail on the head. It's about, of course, we're all going to have fantasies about what we can be. And actually, I think being the only child of really loving, middle-class family, who always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. I think I've always had those fantasies. I always thought I could be a judge. I always thought I could be a politician. I always thought I could be a gambler. All of those things I may well have failed in. Had I done so, the great trick would be to let the failure go.

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• 37:05Elizabeth Day?

  You speak so beautifully about your parents, and I know many of us here will have watched your astonishing documentary that you made with your mother about finding her a care home. Both your parents, as I mentioned in the introduction, lived with Alzheimer's and died with the disease. And it's an incredibly cruel thing for someone to go through and for their family to go through. As an only child, I imagine that weight must have been crushing at times.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. I've talked to a lot of people about this, as you can imagine. And they always say the same thing, that if you are an only child, it is very, very hard. I was lucky because both my kids were young adults by that time, and I was able to share some of that weight with them. But then, as a dad, I didn't want to share too much of that weight with them, although when it got intolerable, I was able to. And my girlfriend at the time was great about it, too. But I kind of felt it was my responsibility. I was their child. They had given me. So much. And I think it was even worse then than it was now in that nobody really knew anything about Alzheimer's. My, their, their, their doctor didn't know anything

• 38:17Speaker 01

  about it. I went to the doctor and he was like, oh, well, it's, your dad's just being a bit silly. That was kind of the message I was getting on, off them. You know, my dad went in to see the doctor and my dad was suffering from such confusion. When he went to see the doctor, he pulled himself together. People with Alzheimer's can be artful, and I don't say that in a cruel way. It's part of their way of coping. He went to see the doctor and he was going, yes, doctor, no, doctor. Oh, that is so silly, doctor. And a great charming smile on his face. Halfway back home again, the, the confusion came back into his face. And I felt so angry with my dad. That's another thing about caring for people with Alzheimer's. And I think particularly when you're, you feel on your

• 39:01Speaker 01

  own like that, is that you do have these feelings of anger and worthlessness and all those other great ghastly emotions that, that come surging up. So yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, it was hard being there.

• 39:15Elizabeth Day?

  Do you miss them?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  I'm trying to ease myself of the burden of missing them. I want to miss them in a relaxed way. And in some ways, I think I've been quite successful about that in that I don't dream of them constantly anymore. I've allowed them and they've allowed me to have that degree of freedom. But even saying that to you, there's a tiny sob in the back of my throat.

• 39:48Elizabeth Day?

  I can feel it. That's such a beautiful way of putting it. It leads us on to your final failure, I think, which is that you failed to deal with your failures.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh man, isn't that frustrating? What's the point of having them if you don't learn from them? Time and time again. Just two little stories about ones that I didn't deal with. I'm nineteen. It's my first job in a rep out of drama school. And it's at Lincoln Theatre Royal. And there was a coffee bar next door. And there was a girl serving in that coffee bar, who was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. The, I couldn't, I couldn't take my eyes off her all the time I was in that coffee bar. And ever, ever she looked at me, dunk, my head went away from her. And I, I, I didn't dare show her how much I fancied her. I was kind of slightly rude to her in a way that adolescent boys are

• 40:44Speaker 01

  when they're dealing with a, a, a girl they think is wonderful. But you know, I was kind of friendly with her, sort of a bit. And on the first night, after the first night, it was a panto. We, there was a party on the stage and we were all there and she was there. And it was kind of unbelievable. She came up to me and she said, Tony, I've done this really dumb thing. I've lost my keys. Would it be all right if I spend the night with you at your place?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  And I said, no.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  All those thoughts came through me, those terrors. What would I do? What should I mean? Could I do it? Would it work? Well, was she winding me up? All those things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just said no. I didn't say, I didn't say no in anything else. I just said no. And in my mind's eye, I just turned my head away. And, and, and she just kind of went back to her friends. And you can imagine, that night, lying in bed, all on my own. You stupid bastard!

• 41:53Speaker 01

  And now, you see, and even now, there's, again, I mean, I can say that, that's the funny thing about humour, I mean, that is like slipping over on a banana skin, isn't it? And I still carry that one with me, slightly. And the other one is, I've left drama school for about maybe five or six years. Dennis Potter was the most famous and most successful and most respected television playwright of his generation. He just had enormous success with Singing Detective. His new television play was called Blue Remembered Hills. And I was cast in it. I was completely unknown.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  I'd worked with the director of it previously with some success, but no one had any idea who it was. I got there for the read-through. All the other people in it were people I really respected. Colin Welland, John Wells, Helen Mirren, everybody that was there was like idols. And I was playing like the baddie, but I couldn't really see him as a baddie. It seemed to me that he was just misunderstood, which I argued in rehearsals, and you know, as one does. Anyway, the third morning, I was asked to turn up fifteen minutes before the rest of

• 43:15Speaker 01

  the cast, and the director said, it's the worst words an actor can ever hear, "I'm sorry, it's not working, I'll have to let you go." You're not, you're not bad enough. The play only works... Some of you may remember it. All these adult actors were playing children but dressed in children's clothes, so adult dressing, so there was this strange to-ing and fro-ing between being an adult and a child. And it did actually need someone being a really stinker of a child, and I wasn't that. And so I walked away, and I never kind of spoke to them or saw them, most of them again, ever.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  And the humiliation of being such a failure, not only in such a potentially successful play, but in front of my peers, was massive. And it took me an awful long time to shake the ghost of that out, you know, twenty or thirty years.

• 44:17Elizabeth Day?

  So when you say this failure to deal with your failures, do you mean that you feel that you should be able to bounce back more quickly?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. That I should, and I think probably in all the questions that you've asked me, that I've been slightly fending off because I wanted to be in control of this interview.

• 44:36Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  This is part of that control thing, I guess, of being small and being a performer, isn't it? You know, you're pitching to me and I'm slightly trying to bend it in my direction. Failures are fine, aren't they, if you triumph out of them? If you take the thing, if you take the lesson that they learn and integrate it into your life. Wise people say there's no such thing as failure. Yes, there is, I've felt it for years, they're wrong, you know. And I think when you begin to learn the mechanism of dealing with those failures, it's an enormous liberation. And I think part of that, for a lot of us, and again, you know, maybe this will come out in the Q and A or in the boozer afterwards, if that's what we do.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  I think growing older, things become less important. And I don't mean they have less meaning. I think Jennifer Saunders said recently, as you grow older, everything grows slightly less erotic. And she didn't mean just sexy things, you know, she meant things aren't so charged. And I think I can now, just as part of the growing older process, can look back at my earlier life and go, oh, bless him, it didn't matter that much. But I think the, sorry, just quickly, I just think that the weaponry of learning that earlier in one's life is an enormous boon, and I wish I'd had it.

• 45:59Elizabeth Day?

  I think that is so well put. And I think also what you're getting at is that there are some failures that aren't easily assimilated, that you can't bounce back from, that might end up being a failure for the rest of your life. But I truly believe that one can live alongside those failures. And the trick, if you can call it that, is to be as at peace with it as you can be.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. It goes back to that thing that I said at the start about not wanting to use the word God or not wanting to use the word history. I kind of want to make you redundant, Elizabeth.

• 46:34Elizabeth Day?

  No, I love it. That's kind of what this podcast is about, so yes, all for it.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I don't want us to use the word failure, because in a way, as soon as you use the word failure... You were wrong. It was bad. It didn't work. I love that metaphor of the oak tree, that if someone gouges the oak tree when it's young, that cut is almost obscene. When you look at it, it's horrible. But gradually, as the oak grows older, and wider, and bigger, and the bark becomes more twisted and more sophisticated, that gouge becomes not only a thing of beauty,

• 47:16Speaker 01

  but probably the most beautiful and defining thing about that oak tree.

• 47:23Elizabeth Day?

  Wow. That was so good. We're coming to an end of the first half, and I know you've wanted to be in control of this interview, Tony, but there was one question that you said that you would answer later, which was about whether you found someone or somewhere to confide your hurt to. You're now seventy-eight, I believe, so two years from eighty. Have you found that place?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  I've got a couple, actually. One of them is my wife. Recovering alcoholics talk about talking the stuff. And I think what they mean is that most of what we say basically is a bit of old rubbish, isn't it? It's just kind of calming each other down, soothing ourselves, talking because it's terrifying when there's silence, talking because we're told we have to, talking to show off. But there is another kind of talking, which is the talking that has meaning. And to be able to share that with another person, I think is golden. And to me, that is the mark of meaningful relationships.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Of course, we talk at the node of old twaddle a lot of the time. But talking the stuff, I think, is great. And I think when you find someone you can talk the stuff with, and not just talking about the stuff in relation to other people, which is kind of quite easy, really. Look at that guy over there. Isn't his body language sad? Can you see his relationship with... You know, that's interesting, but quite easy. But talking about why you behave the way you do, and why you behave the way you do when you're with that other person, when you're being shitty to that other person, how you feel yourself, I think actually is an enormous liberation and a kindness both to you and to that other person.

• 49:10Elizabeth Day?

  So you've found your person and that's your wife? Yeah. What a beautiful note to end on. So Tony, you are a wonderful, wise oak tree. And it has been such a joy to talk to you, the fantastic Sir Tony Robinson.

• 49:34Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How To Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.