First broadcast on 28 September 1989.
Captain Blackadder is in the trenches on the Western front of the First World War, with comrades Lieutenant George and Private S. Baldrick.
I know from long experience all my men have the artistic talent of a cluster of colour blind hedgehogs in a bag.
Blackadder
General Melchett is on the lookout for a talented artist who can do an especially stirring painting for the cover of King and Country magazine. This is a publication which George calls "damn inspiring stuff" and Blackadder calls "soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent".
George produces a picture of genius, but Blackadder passes it off as his own, believing that Melchett will send the successful artist to Paris and away from the trenches.
However, Melchett's secret plan is in fact to make Blackadder go into No Man's Land and sketch what he sees.
Melchett is not at all put off by the resulting work of art (complete with elephants) and orders the boys to go over the top anyway. They weasel out of certain death by posing as a trio of wandering Italian chefs.
War's A Horrid Thing. Ding A Ling A Ling.
The troops are about to go over the top, or, as Blackadder more accurately puts it, "Field Marshal Haig is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches close to Berlin."
Insult Of The Episode
Blackadder: Your brain's so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
