Tony Robinson's Cunningcast

Ben Elton is on Cunningcast today.  Ben was the co-writer on Blackadder Series 2, 3 and 4: they talk about Ben's comedy roots, working on The Young Ones with Rik and Ade and how Ben got the Blackadder gig via a near miss TV sitcom about Madness. They also chew over the highs and lows of working on Blackadder and how Ben and Richard Curtis created 'Adder speak'.

Alongside Blackadder, Ben Elton cut his comedy chops on The Young Ones...

Fresh off the back of celebrating 60 years of Dr Who last year and looking ahead to welcoming the 15th Doctor to the blockbuster show, Tony is joined by Sophie Aldred who played Dr Who’s assistant Ace and the writer, broadcaster and Dr Who superfan, Matthew Sweet...

20 years after playing Baldrick, Tony is still stopped in the street and asked where my turnip is!  Turnips made him famous, so today Tony is talking turnips in history: have they always been so unloved, a food fit only for animals and peasants like Baldrick, or is this a recent British bugbear? And when did the potato steal their veggie crown? Tony’s guests today are food historians Rebecca Earle and Serin Quinn alongside a chef for all seasons who loves to cook with turnips, Oliver...

Today Tony is talking to the composer Howard Goodall CBE, who wrote the now iconic Blackadder theme tune. Howard is one of Britain’s best-known composers of choral music, stage musicals, TV and film scores. He wrote the themes tunes for many hit comedy shows including Red Dwarf, Mr. Bean, The Vicar of Dibley, The Catherine Tate Show, 2point4 Children and Q.I. but like so many of the talent who worked on the show, it all started with Blackadder...

Marching 73 miles from coast to coast across the narrowest neck of England, Hadrian’s Wall was the north-west frontier of the Roman Empire for nearly 300 years and yet there is still so much we don’t know about it: only 5% of the wall has been excavated and 7% is viable today...

Passwords and codes are something we take for granted in the digital age, but this is such a new development and today Tony is going back to a time when making and breaking codes was an almost exclusively high-level military activity: most famously done behind closed doors by the brains at Bletchley Park...

Men’s facial hair is very prone to fashions: moustaches and beards are back in, but why is that and what sparks bread trends and facial hair fashions? To help him find out, Tony has invited ‘beard’ historian Alun Withey and male grooming influencer Robin James | Man For Himself...

Today Tony is talking to his old friend and collaborator, the screenwriter Richard Curtis. They share memories of making Blackadder from the early years to how it all ended. Along the way, they discuss Richard’s comedy roots and how he became a top comedy screenwriter: meeting Rowan Atkinson at Oxford Uni; working on Not The Nine O’Clock News; the influence of Fawlty Towers and plans for a Blackadder series set in the 1960s that never happened...

Electric cars are the future of motoring, or so we are told, but today’s Cunningcast guests don’t agree. In fact, Hugo Spowers of Riversimple thinks hydrogen is the future and he’s designing hydrogen powered cars to prove it. Together with experienced car broadcaster Richard Sutton, they give Tony the low down on the past, present and their vision for the future of car engineering and sustainability...

Today Tony is conjuring up - a history of stage magic: from Reginald Scot's 1584 ‘Discovery of Witchcraft’ to Servais LeRoy ‘The Belgium Conjuror’ and Talma, ‘The Queen of Coins’ via escapologist Harry Houdini to TV magic with David Berglas, Paul Daniels and David Copperfield. Tony also explores women in magic and how ‘female assistants’ were integral to the magic tricks they performed...