I remember a conversation I had with Victoria Wood in the BBC lunch queue that we believed ourselves equally competent and capable of Shakespeare as anyone else.

“But because she was a dumpy woman and I was a short man... comedy it was.

“So yes, the ‘short gods’ helped me survive between the ages of 18-38 because I was a specialist short person. No one else could be a rabbit or a rat!” Tony Robinson laughs.

Amazing then that until Blackadder came along, Tony Robinson, better known as the much maligned Baldrick, had no idea of his innate comic abilities.

“I didn’t know what comic timing was until I realised I had it,” he admits, with Baldrick-esque dead pan delivery, “and then I did 38 Blackadders in a row.”

“So I think my comedy ability was rooted by the productions I’d done before, by my experience. It’s a mistake to go on stage and try to be funny rather than roll with a funny script,” he advises.

This introspection about his own funny bone and the stirrings of his legendary career come about as a result of his autobiography No Cunning Plan, being aired at this year’s Chip Lit Fest and providing equal measures of nostalgia, poignancy and disclosure. Despite writing more than 30 children’s books, this was Tony’s first sole foray into adult non-fiction, and took him the best part of a year to write.

“It was a real adventure. Looking back at my early life was really quite easy but the latter half was like looking at it through an astronomical telescope.

“I needed to be objective about things. I had to stand back and observe my behaviour. But I got there in the end.”

Was it a painful process then or a cathartic one? “Both my parents had dementia so working through their later years was a challenge and very painful because you go through all the emotions: guilt, abandonment, anger and tiredness, that all those who live with, or look after those with dementia, will recognise.”

I wonder then if the book is a way of silencing his critics once and for all, who continually revel in his private life, in particular his 2011 marriage to Laura who is half his age.

“The problem with being in the public eye is that every time the media writes something they regurgitate things from years ago as if they are new and exciting revelations, and you just think ‘Christ Almighty, not again’ . So yes, this was the chance to give people a more rounded version of who I am, rather than just a character in the newspaper. But my autobiography stops in 2006 before Louise and I got together.”

“I understand why people are interested. I’m as likely to pick up a gossip magazine as the next person even though I know how largely inaccurate they are and how people are deliberately cast in a certain light, so I understand the motivation behind it.

Did he aim to discuss his private life in the book then or shy away from it? “I was very candid actually. I didn’t set out to be . It was supposed to be more about my work than my life but I realised as I wrote that lots of the decisions I made and my career choices were based on what was going on in my personal life and I couldn’t separate the two.”

And what a career it has been, from child star parts in West End musicals such as The Artful Dodger in Oliver as, to drama school, rep, Black Adder and Maid Marion and then his renaissance in Time Team,the myriad of documentaries that have followed and his successful sideline as a children’s author.

The most flattering thing is someone saying they like my work, not Time Team or Blackadder, but all of it, the breadth of things I do,” he says.

“Because it’s all part of this extraordinary adventure we all call life and I’m enthusiastic about everything because as far as I know we only get to do it once.

As a freelance you do wonder whether your career has happened precipitous to you or fortuitously.

Take Black Adder for example. In a way I’m not surprised it’s still standing up because it was a very collaborative writing process so the jokes were really honed. All the cast were comic writers so it’s very multilayered.

“But Time Team was the opposite. Time Team had seen me in a documentary for Comic Relief and thought I’d be good. They didn’t realise I was actually interested in archaeology until they called me in to talk about doing the series,and I started asking quite specific archaeological questions.”

As for the documentaries, after seven years of doing Time Team, Ch4 wanted to expand the series but I wanted to try some projects other than just archaeology so we negotiated that every time I did a Time Team series I could undertake four unspecified documentaries that would be nothing to do with archaeology and instead lots of hair brained ideas - such as a funny series on the history of British law.

“I am someone with a passion for history and like being part of the action. It’s like an espresso shot.

“So I do find it extraordinary when people ask me if I’m really really interested in archaeology, as if it was just a job, when I’ve always hoped that answer was fairly self evident.”

As for his three children I ask whether they have inherited his endless enthusiasm? I hope I’ve passed my fascination with history, archaeology and storytelling onto my children because they have been the premier relationships in my life.

“And my love for them has become part of my drive. My family always comes first. So I’m very proud of my children’s books because I write them from that part inside me that loves my family about the Weird World Of Wonders, as I call the world we live in.”

Chip Lit Fest runs from April 27-30.

chiplitfest.com