Tony Robinson

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Sir Anthony Robinson (born 15 August 1946) is an English actor, comedian, author, presenter and political activist.

He played Baldrick in the BBC television series Blackadder and has hosted several historical documentaries including the Channel 4 programmes Time Team and The Worst Jobs in History.

Robinson was a member of the Labour Party and has served on its National Executive Committee.

He has also written 16 children's books.

Early life

Robinson was born on 15 August 1946 in Homerton, London, to Phyllis and Leslie Robinson. He attended Woodford Green Preparatory School and Wanstead County High grammar school. He passed four O-levels (English language, English literature, history, and geography) and went on to study for A-levels, but did not complete them and decided to study at a drama school instead. Too young to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Robinson enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1963, graduating in 1966.

Robinson had his first acting role at the age of 13, as a member of Fagin's gang in the original production of the musical Oliver!, including a stint as the Artful Dodger when the boy playing the role failed to turn up. Over the next five years, he appeared in a number of West End theatre shows, and in film, and television.

Through genealogical research, Robinson found that one of his great-great-great grandmothers, Julia Levy, was Jewish; his father, unaware of this ancestry, had been beaten by Fascists in the East End of London in the 1930s who assumed he was a Jew.

Personal life

Robinson was first married in 1969 to Barbara ("Bardy") Henshall, and divorced four years later. He was married from the late 1970s until 1992 to Mary Shepherd, with whom he had two children. He married Louise Hobbs in 2011.

In 2006, he appeared in Tony Robinson: Me and My Mum, a documentary surrounding his decision to find a nursing home for his mother, and the difficulty he had doing so. The documentary showed his mother's death in the home. It also featured stories from other families in similar situations. It appeared as part of Channel 4's short series of programmes titled The Trouble with Old People.

In late 2009, he was invited to be guest speaker at the Pride of Craegmoor Awards, where he gave a speech about his time with his mother and finding a care home. He then went on to give the prizes to Craegmoor's Shining Star and Leading Light. In January 2016, he described Alzheimer's as "one of the last great medical terrors" and announced he would be leaving money to the Alzheimer's Society in his will.

Robinson is a fan of EFL Championship club Bristol City F.C. He is also a fan of the rock band Genesis and provided sleeve notes for the reissue of the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway as part of the Genesis 1970–1975 box set.

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Acting career

He spent four years in repertory theatre, most notably at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. Robinson obtained a fellowship from the Birmingham Arts Council to work as a director and co-founded the Avon Touring Company, a Bristol-based community theatre company, with writer David Illingworth. In the 1972-1973 series of Doctor In Charge, he appeared briefly as student doctor Grace.

In the nativity musical Follow The Star, Robinson appeared in the 1974–75 season at Chichester Festival Theatre as Angel Chicago. In Henrik Ibsen's Enemy of the People, he appeared as Hovstad in the 1975 season. He appeared in Twelfth Night and as Majorin in Monsieur Perpeton's Travels in 1976.

Robinson appeared on Boffs' Island in 1972 and was later a host on Play Away. He appeared in the award-winning Horizon documentary Joey as well as in the title role in the BBC film The Miracle of Brother Humphrey. He appeared in the film Brannigan starring John Wayne. Wayne, a two-part scene actor who is playing a motorcycle courier who is pushed off a quay by Wayne, shared two dialogue scenes with him. In the early/mid-1980s, he was also one of the team on the Channel 4 comedy/satirical series Who Dares Wins.

Robinson first came to fame in 1983 as Edmund Blackadder's dogsbody Baldrick. He was remarkably astute in the first series, but his master was an idiot. The duo's later series (Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third, Blackadder Goes Forth) pushed the pair through history and changed the dynamic, while Baldrick had devolved into a buffoon whose catchphrase was "I have a cunning plan."

Robinson wrote and narrated several Jackanory-style children's programs, which were mainly encouraged by Richard Curtis. Tales From Fat Tulip's Garden (continued in Fat Tulip Too), Odysseus: The Greatest Hero of Them All (a retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey) and Blood and Honey (tales from the Old Testament shot on location) were among the programs in this style.

Robinson appeared in the BBC Radio 4 comedy Delve Special (1984-1977), written by Tony Sarchet.

Robinson, who appeared on Blackadder, became the narrator and one of the lead actors in the British animated series Nellie the Elephant, based on the song of the same name. The series ran from 1989 to 1991 and was shown on Children's ITV.

He also acted in the cartoon short Free-Ranger, an English kid-scripted arts-funded production that was released in 1989. For BBC 1, Robinson also created Stay Tooned, a collection of classic Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons. Maid Marian and her Merry Men, a loose retelling of Robin Hood's legend in which he appeared as the Sheriff of Nottingham, was released in 1989, following a pantomime at Tyndale Baptist Church, Bristol, but with Maid Marian as the lead actor. On BBC1, four series were broadcast from 1989 to 1994. In an episode of Bergerac called "My Name's Sergeant Bergerac" in 1990, he appeared as "Shlomo Denkoviz" (Series 8, Episode 2).

Robinson appeared in a minor role in a television show "One Flew Over the Parents' Nest" in 1994, in which he portrayed a woman named "Willie the Weed."

Robinson appeared in Baldrick in a one-off short film in the Blackadder series, made to honor the new millennium. It was titled Blackadder: Back & Forth, which was broadcast in the Millennium Dome in 2000 and then aired on BBC One in 2002.

Robinson was also the voiceover for a handful of airports at a variety of airports for the television series Airline, which appeared from 1999 to rely on the daily lives of EasyJet employees. The series was produced for ITV and is often repeated today on Sky Real Lives, Sky One, Sky Two, Sky Three, and ITV2. Robinson appeared on six of the remaining nine series before it was cancelled in 2006 as the narrator.

Tony Robinson's Cunning Night Output, a mostly rebuilt one-man stage performance, was followed in early 2005 by a variety of Robinson's favorite subjects from his career for which he is well known. Later on DVD, the program was re-released.

Robinson narrated Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, rather than narrating his own tales. The unbridged versions of Nigel Planer, Celia Imrie, and Stephen Briggs were narrated. In addition, he sat in for several characters in the videogame Discworld. He continued his Discworld service by appearing in the live action television dramatization of Hogfather, which was broadcast on Sky over the Christmas season in 2006.

On Sunday, Robinson also hosted Classic FM's Friendly Guide to Classical Music, which aired at 4 p.m. on Sunday. On December 26, 2006, the complete 16-episode sequence was repeated. On the BBC Radio 2 feature "Whis Years" by Brian May, "I Can Help" by Billy Swan, "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis, "Unfinished Sympathy" by Beverley Knight, "This Woman's Passion" by Beverley Knight, "I Can Help" by Beverley Knight, "Unfinished Sympathy" by Maxwell, "British "Megaphone" by Bena Thomas, "Unfinished Sympathy" by the Chiffons

In 2007, Robinson narrated television commercials for Honda in the humourous style of Tales From Fat Tulip's Garden. Plastic cars with expressive faces (similar to Thomas the Tank Engine) are included in the advertisements. He was also a voiceover for Domestos and Vanish, cleaning supplies from 2007 to 2009. Robinson visited 30 towns in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2007 as part of A Cunning Night Out.

Arthur Barnes, a sly hit man, appeared in the light-hearted BBC1 series Hotel Babylon in July 2009. During a showdown in the lobby, the hotel boss expertly lobbed a flying bottle.

Sir Jonathan Miller directed the Gala Performance of William Shakespeare's King Lear at the Old Vic in London in which Robinson played the Fool.

He appeared in a touring production of Le rêve imaginaire, directed by Lindsay Posner, in 2014. In Man Down's 2016 and 2017, he played the villain 'Daddy' alongside Greg Davies and Roisin Conaty.

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Honours and awards

• 1999: Honorary Master of Arts (M.A.) degree from the University of Bristol for his services to drama and archaeology.
• 2002: Honorary Master of Arts (M.A.) degree by the University of East London.
• 2005: Honorary degree of Doctor of the University (D.Univ.) from the Open University for his contribution to the educational or cultural well-being of society.
• 2005: Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree from the University of Exeter for his active involvement in politics.
• 2006: Honorary degree of Doctor of the University (D.Univ.) from Oxford Brookes University.
• 2008: James Joyce Award from the Literary and Historical Society of UCD.
• 2011: Honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree by University of Chester.
• 2013: Knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in her 2013 Birthday Honours List.
• 2019: Honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) degree from the University of Aberdeen.