Speaking at a Cheltenham Literature Festival event to mark the 25th anniversary of the first Blackadder series, Curtis said he and co-writer Ben Elton had agreed to set it in the swinging Sixties.

One of the highlights would have been the “revelation” that Kennedy was actually killed by Baldrick. “He was going to kill Kennedy and it would have been a mistake,” said Four Weddings And A Funeral director Curtis.

“We’d decided on the Sixties because it was such a rich period. It was a time of dodgy entrepreneurs with their fingers in loads of pies.”

He and Elton had discussed many other periods to set future series, including making Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder an aide to Margaret Thatcher at No 10, as well as a biblical innkeeper.

In the end, they could not get the cast together.

Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick, added: “I loved the idea of a cowboy Blackadder with Rowan as the cowboy and me as his trusty Mexican sidekick.”

Wonder what Atkinson’s cutting alter ego would have said to that!

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