This Is Guernsey

By Nicci Martel

Time Team presenter Tony Robinson in Guernsey. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0546947)

A MIX of history and intrigue could lure Channel 4’s Time Team to Guernsey, according to presenter Tony Robinson yesterday.

The Channel Islands are one of the few places in the British Isles never to have featured in the show and Mr Robinson said the team would love an excuse to visit the Bailiwick.

‘It’s absolute madness that we’ve never been here. I think the researchers have been over to look for sites, but it has just never happened so if anyone in Guernsey has found an interesting site that they want to dig, then please get in touch. But it has to have a bit of mystery to it to give us something to solve.’

Mr Robinson had been invited to be guest speaker at an Azur Productions Celebrity Lunch at The Farmhouse.

Next year will mark 50 years in broadcasting for Mr Robinson, who is best known for his role as turnip-loving sidekick Baldrick in the BBC’s Blackadder.

Despite the series having ended in 1989 – with the exception of a one-off special 10 years later – Mr Robinson said the relationship between the cast had not changed.

‘I saw Rik Mayall not that long ago, actually – we provided the voices for two germs down a toilet for an advert.

‘It’s like when you see people from school – as soon as you bump into them, you fall back into the same intensity of friendship. There is never a feeling of guardedness.’

As for former colleagues Hugh Laurie and Rowan Atkinson and their huge success in the USA, he has thought about trying his luck there too.

He said he gets waves of jealousy seeing them on TV, but at the same time knows they are missing their families, are under a huge amount of pressure and are constantly in the eye of the media.

‘I’m very happy with what I do. I have some degree of what some people laughingly call celebrity, but it doesn’t distort my life.’

Article posted on 8th March, 2008 - 9.30am