This weeks Comedy Dialogue of the Week is by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, and comes from the first episode of Blackadder III. Prince George’s (Hugh Laurie) butler Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) works to undermine the Prime Minster’s (Pitt the Younger) plans to remove the Prince Regent’s income.

Calling on royalist Sir Talbot Buxomly to sway the vote in their favour, Blackadder and the Prince are astonished to find that he has died mid conversation…

EDMUND: We must move at once.
PRINCE GEORGE: In which direction?
EDMUND: Sir Talbot represented the constituency of Dunny-on-the-Wold, and, by an extraordinary stroke of luck, it is a rotten borough.
PRINCE GEORGE: Really! Is it! Well, lucky-lucky us. Lucky-lucky-luck. (as a chicken) Luck-luck-LAKK-LAKK-LAKK-LAKK-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck
-LAKK-LAKK-LAKK.
EDMUND: You don’t know what a rotten borough is, do you, sir.
PRINCE GEORGE: No.
EDMUND: So what was the chicken impression in aid of?
PRINCE GEORGE: Well, I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Erm, so, what is a robber button?
EDMUND: Rotten borough.
PRINCE GEORGE: Oh, yes, you’re right.
EDMUND: A rotten borough, sir, is a constituency where the owner of the land corruptly controls the both the voters and the MP.
PRINCE GEORGE: Good, yes…and a robber button is…?
EDMUND: Could we leave that for a moment? Dunny-on-the-Wold is a tuppenny-ha’penny place. Half an acre of sodden marshland in the Suffolk Fens with an empty town hall on it. Population: three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named `Colin’, and a small hen in its late forties.
PRINCE GEORGE: So, no people at all, then? apart from Colin…
EDMUND: Colin is a dog, sir.

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