We've seen Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder going forth in the First World War, ruffed-up and ruffled as a courtier to Elizabeth I and trussed up in a wig as a stroppy Prince Edmund in the middle ages. But a `lost' episode due to be revealed this week presents the character as we've never seen him before: Edmund Blackadder the Bethlehem innkeeper.

The unfinished script was written as a Christmas special in 1988 by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton but was never filmed. The story featured Blackadder's haphazard servant Baldrick (played in the long-running series by Tony Robinson), some of the more comical moments in the nativity story, the Three Kings, and a talking turkey.