A forgotten script for a biblical themed Blackadder has been unearthed, and will be featured in a new book about the show!

In the draft Rowan Atkinson famous character of Blackadder is an innkeeper, the innkeeper that offered Mary and Joseph accommodation for the night when baby Jesus was born.

The draft was found and passed by Richard Curtis, one of the show writers, to comedy historian Jem Roberts, who has written the new book about the show – and who describes the material as ‘completely unofficial Blackadder’.

According to the Metro newspaper, the script, Curtis admitted, was never made for fear of it “causing too much offence”, commenting:

“When you write a book about a comedy world, there is a dream that you’ll be invited into this Ali Baba’s cave of unbelievable archive material,’ Roberts said in an interview with the BBC.

“I always presumed that would never be the case with Blackadder.”

He went on to describe the script as ‘a cross between Fawlty Towers and Life of Brian’.

Blackadder was one of the UK’s most successful comedy series, and followed the lives of Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) his dirty sidekick, Baldrick (Tony Robinson) and many other supporting characters such as Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, as they experienced life in different parts of history including the First World War and the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth 1st and the Prince Regent!

The show came to an end in 1989 at the end of World War I, but returned in 1999 for the one-off special Blackadder Back and Forth, which featured several historical era’s with a little help from a time machine!

A festive special, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, was produced instead of Curtis’ Biblical script, and was screened in December 1988.