‘We realise the people kept at
WITH the 75th anniversary of VE Day on Friday, the parallels with our current crisis are chillingly obvious, says actor and history presenter Sir Tony Robinson.
He has made an evocative film for Discovery about the landmark day and says: “I think it’s really going to touch the moment, more by accident than design.
“I doubt whether when it was commissioned, which obviously was pre-virus, that everyone would have realised how close it would be to today. I must have watched it four times now, and the new thing which strikes me is, ‘Oh, that’s just like now’.”
Famed around the world for his portrayal of plucky servant Baldrick in Blackadder, Robinson, 73, reveals he was still making the show –VE Day: Minute By Minute – as lockdown took hold in the UK. But they had “a cunning plan” up their sleeve.
“It was right up to the wire,” he laughs down the phone. “Obviously, I couldn’t do the voiceover in the voiceover studio, so I did it in my sitting room in a tent made out of that old 1950s underlay that is like a blanket.they made me a tent which was over my sofa, and it was just me and my sofa, and in the next room, though I never saw him, the sound man. It was quite something.”
The film chronicles the day through footage, new and old, and commentary from historians as we build to the announcement fromwinston Churchill at 3pm that war had finally ended. A huge party ensued together with numerous balcony appearances from the Royals at Buckingham Palace. Many smaller details in the film surprised the presenter.
“I think I knew most of the headline stuff, but it was more how people reacted.there was this 10-year-old boy who said, ‘Oh it was fantastic, I actually had a jam tart!’ Growing up in the mid-1950s, a jam tart was the most boring thing imaginable and my mum used to cook and buy loads, and I never used to understand but I do now.as far as she was concerned, they represented freedom and liberation from tyranny. But I wanted something with a bit of cream in it!”
Robinson came into the world, in
Homerton, in London’s East End, on another significant day almost 18 months afterve
Day. “I was actually born on the first anniversary ofvj Day,august 15, so I’m really aware of those anniversaries and my proximity to the end of the war. People around me were always talking about the end of the war on my birthday.”
His mother and father, Leslie and Phyllis, were both working class and from Hackney, London. “Both of them went into the RAF when the war started, and it was the most liberating experience of their lives,” he says. “They met all kinds of people they would have never met, and they went to all parts of the country.
“Both were stationed in Britain, my dad played boogie-woogie piano with a Forces group, my mum was in the am drams in Reading. Both did things they would have never been associated with prior to the war.and so, throughout my childhood, really all my stories were about adventures they had during the war including Dad coming home once, worse for wear, and stumbling through the wrong door at digs!
“I think they had two effects on me. First, we had this little semi-detached in South Woodford and in the front room, there was a three-piece suite, the telly and huge baby grand, completely dominating the room. So there was the introduction to amateur drama