Classic TV Moments: Blackadder The Third: The Loyal MP in Dish and Dishonesty

Sublime writing by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, in the episode Dish and Dishonesty, gave us ruddy faced Sir Talbot Buxomly (Denis Lill) who had the worst attendance record of any member of Parliament. On the one occasion he entered the House of Commons, he ‘passed water in the Great Hall, and then passed out in the Speaker’s chair’. Prince George (Hugh Laurie) needed Buxomly’s support to overcome the machinations of Prime Minister Pitt the Younger. Edmund suggested bribing Buxomly with an appointment as a High Court judge…

George: ‘Is he qualified?’
Blackadder: ‘He’s a violent, bigoted, mindless old fool.’
George: ‘Sounds a bit over qualified.’

On his arrival at the palace though, Buxomly turns out to be totally loyal as he proves with one of the most ramblingly incoherent diatribes ever assembled in the name of comedy and one which lays into the whole concept of loyalty to monarchy: ‘I care not a jot that you are the son of a certified sauerkraut-sucking loon… It minds not me that you dress like a mad parrot and talk like a plate of beans negotiating their way out of a cow’s digestive system. It is no skin off my rosy nose that there are bits of lemon peel floating down the Thames that would make better Regents than you… The fact is, you are Regent… appointed by God, and I shall stick by you forever, though infirmity lay me waste and ill health curse my every waking moment.’ At which point he drops dead in a chair forcing a supremely absurd by-election.