As horrible, unexpected news goes, this is both totally horrible and totally unexpected. Rik Mayall was a pivotal figure for a generation of comedy fans. For him to die at 56 is cruel. There was always talk that one day he would revive his partnership with Ade Edmondson and they would make a geriatric version of their uber-violent sitcom Bottom in which they were really grumpy, really old men.
The only consolation is that Mayall leaves a formidable body of work behind him. Most people will immediately think of him as Rick, the pigtailed “People’s Poet” in The Young Ones. But interestingly during BBC2’s recent fiftieth birthday nostalgia-fest, the clip that prompted a truly rousing response on Twitter was Mayall as Redditch's finest investigative reporter (still living with his mum) Kevin Turvey. On the programme Paul Whitehouse was just one of a number of comedy icons who turned out to be a huge fan and did a pitch-perfect word-for-word impression of Mayall as the dim-witted Turvey discussing "fish that I like".
But Mayall also managed to reinvent himself and time after time showed that he was a versatile actor, playing, for instance, all sorts of roles from sexy heroes to nerdy villains in the Comic Strip films such as A Fistful of Travellers Cheques. He made a splash as the dashing Flashheart in the Blackadder cycle and was a malevolent tour de force as Machiavellian politician Alan B’Stard in Marks and Gran’s The New Statesman. He even nearly cracked Hollywood in the movie Drop Dead Fred with Phoebe Cates.
After his near-fatal quad bike accident in 1998 he seemed to make a full recovery and continued to work. In 2003 when I interviewed him with Adrian Edmondson – they were promoting a stage version of Bottom – he did seem a little strange. I asked Edmondson if the accident had had changed Mayall's personality and Edmondson, who had known him since they were Samuel Beckett-loving drama students in Manchester in the mid-1970s, gave a shrug and said that he was always odd.
Most recently Mayall appeared as the prank-playing father of Greg Davies in the C4 sitcom Man Down. There was a feeling of things coming full circle and Mayall passing the nutter-baton on to another generation – it has often been said that Davies bears a striking physical resemblance to Mayall.
I suspect there were frustrations. He was more of an actor than a stand-up comedian and perhaps he would have liked to have been a more successful straight actor. I really enjoyed his full-on starring role in Gogol's The Government Inspector at the National Theatre in the mid-1980s. I interviewed him a few times and at one point he expressed annoyance that Alan Rickman was getting the movie parts that he felt he could do. He should not have been frustrated. I doubt if Alan Rickman could have ever been as convincing as the People’s Poet.
Watch Rik Mayall as Kevin Turvey
