Son of Blackadder goes forth to guard president of France
AS Captain Edmund Blackadder, Rowan Atkinson showed little pride in the uniform he wore in the satirical First World War TV comedy.
It was a very different story this week at Sandhurst, when his son Benjamin, a trainee officer, was chosen to help welcome French president Emmanuel Macron to the military academy.
Dark-haired Cadet Atkinson, 23, looked a world away in his dress uniform from his father’s character in the comedy series first broadcast in 1989.
Immaculate Benjamin stood rigidly to attention alongside French cadets forming a guard of honour as a smiling Mr Macron posed for photographs with Prime Minister Theresa May by his side.
The Sandhurst summit was hailed by Mrs May as a sign of the “warm relationship” between France and Britain as they prepare for Brexit.
Handsome young Benjamin, right, is nearing the end of his time at the world-famous military academy in Berkshire, which trained Princes William and Harry for military service.
Despite his poker-face on Thursday, Benjamin seems to have inherited his father’s dead-pan sense of humour.
When he learned he had been accepted into Sandhurst in 2016, Ben tweeted: “Dunno what this letter is but apparently The Royal Military Academy want me to come and attend them. Sounds like fun.” Rowan Atkinson played Captain Edmund Blackadder in Blackadder Goes Forth as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. Aided by his side-kick Baldrick, he did his utmost in the trenches to avoid putting himself at risk, with “cunning plans” which usually backfired hilariously. However, he redeemed himself in the final episode by doing his duty and “going over the top” to certain death. Benjamin is the eldest child of Rowan and his former wife, make-up artist Sunetra Sastry, and has a younger sister, Lily. Unlike Ben, Lily has followed her father into showbusiness, working recently as a burlesque dancer. But she is understood to have dropped her father’s surname and styles herself as Lily Sastry. Atkinson, 63 and worth £70 million, divorced Sunetra in 2015. His new partner actress Louise Ford, who is 28 years younger, was due to give birth to their first child last month.