Fry finally 'reveals' he's gay

The Blackadder star, 52, told followers on Twitter website about his sexuality to mark International Coming Out Day.

Stephen wrote: "Oh my, it's International Coming Out Day - just time to announce that I'm a screaming gaysexual before midnight strikes."

But the comic, who has never hidden his sexuality, was forced to amend his site after realising he had come out too quickly.

He added: "Oh no, I've come too soon. It's actually Coming Out Day in the UK in 32 minutes.

"But I was coming out to Americans where it is today."

Black Adder--The Ultimate Edition, the Compleatest Black Adder of them all

Fans of witty wordplay have long known/memorized the great Rowan Atkinson-Richard Curtis.

Love, Actually) series The Black Adder, a BBC hit of the 80s that re-runs up on BBC cable and PBS here almost constantly. A "cult hit?" To this day, yes.

All the DVD collections of this capture the lengthy insults, the banter, the withering looks of scorn of Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Tim McInnerny and Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Miranda Richardson, in all their laugh-tracked glory. But it's the extras that make this new set, due out Oct. 20, "definitive."

Four series of six shows each--each presenting this scheming lesser nobleman (Atkinson) from the Blackadder family ( a real surname, funnier still) struggling to make his way through the nitwits in charge to survive and thrive and move up the courtier's ladder. He tries to angle onto the 14th century throne, to gain the favor of the childishly dim Elizabeth I (Richardson, hys-TERICAL, "Who is Queen?") in the late 16th century, to save the biscuits of the dotty Prince Regent (Hugh Laurie, hys-TERICAL, "He's got a brain the size of a weasel's wedding tackle.") ) in the late 18th century, and to save his own skin in the trenches of WWI.

Favorite line, one worth employing in reviewing many a Hollywood Western (Colin Farrell's Jesse James comes to mind). "You ride a horse rather less well that another horse would."
Robinson, the EveryMan sidekick, Man of the People, Lover of Turnips and wearer of more fake boils than any actor in recorded history, a Baldrick's Baldrick.

In recent years I've interviewed writer turned writer-director Richard Curtis and star Rowan Atkinson, both of whom buried the series with the reception they said it had gotten in the Back and Forth Millennium film shown in London. I'd never seen that, a time traveling Black Adder that skips back to favorite periods from the series (bringing back Fry, Miranda Richardson, et. al). It's on disc here and it's not bad at all. Colin Firth is Shakespeare, Kate Moss as a Maid Marian to Rick Mayall's Robin Hood, etc.

I'd also never seen the various "specials," A Black Adder Christmas Carol and a Black Adder cavalier in the age of Cromwell. There's a great 25th anniversary "making of" that re-unites the whole lot -- Fry on his estate in Africa, Atkinson, driving round the various locations in the UK, Richardson going to wardrobe to see her queen costumes and Laurie, now on House, remembering his big break.

A telling moment in that making of (very similar to the Monty Python Holy Grail making-of documentary), when Curtis and Atkinson and a producer remember that the rubber-faced, rubber-voiced Atkinson literally didn't know which voice to do at the beginning of the first take of the first series. He chose wrong, which is why that one remains the weakest of the bunch.

It's incredibly funny stuff, a real departure for those who only know Atkinson from his Bean and Johnny English film work, and would make a bloody amusing Christmas present.