Edmund: For God’s sake, George, how long have you been in the army?
George: Oh me? I joined up straight away, sir. August the 4th, 1914. Gah, what a day that was: myself and the rest of the fellows leapfrogging down to the Cambridge recruiting office and then playing tiddlywinks in the queue. We had hammered Oxford’s tiddlywinkers only the week before, and there we were, off to hammer the Boche! Crashingly superb bunch of blokes. Fine, clean-limbed — even their acne had a strange nobility about it.
Edmund: Yes, and how are all the boys now?
George: Well, er, Jacko and the Badger bought it at the first Ypres front, unfortunately — quite a shock, that. I remember Bumfluff’s house-master wrote and told me that Sticky had been out for a duck, and the Gubber had snitched a parcel sausage-end and gone goose-over-stump frogside.
Edmund: Meaning…?
George: I don’t know, sir, but I read in the Times that they’d both been killed.
Edmund: And Bumfluff himself…?
George: Copped a packet at Galipoli with the Aussies — so had Drippy and Strangely Brown. I remember we heard on the first morning of the Somme when Titch and Mr Floppy got gassed back to Blighty.
Edmund: Which leaves…?
George: Gosh, yes, I, I suppose I’m the only one of the Trinity Tiddlers still alive. (Lummy?), there’s a thought — and not a jolly one.
Edmund: My point exactly, George.
Blackadder Goes Fourth
Brilliant writing, one of the best British comedies ever commissioned.
