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1981 to 1993 I don't want Kevin (Turvey) to be just a wacky comedian, who's safe because we know it's just funny. I don't want him to be just taking the piss out of Birmingham working class 'cause that's not what he's about. He's an individual who happens to be funny in his own right. In fact he's really quite normal. Most of the people you see on TV don't really exist in real life. On stage you can group 200 people together and scare them or
embarrass them or whatever. You can't do that on TV. You have to use the
conventions, that's why Kevin (Turvey) works so well. People won't listen to you if they think you're experimenting on
them.... Which we are, really! Carabet is about talking to an audience. You can't pretend to
be anywhere else. You're not doing revue which is what Oxbridge do: "now
we're in a cheese shop, or waiting at a bus stop". The audience won't tolerate
that. They want to be talked to. If you pretend to be a character you have to
be a total character who's real enough for the audience to believe
him. The people who are really daring are people like Alexei Sayle
and Keith Allen, who got up as themselves and do it. What I like doing is going
up so involved in a character that people think he's actually real. Like Rick
the Poet... that worked really well because out came the most embarrassing
person you've ever seen, too embarrassing to boo even, because you feel so
sorry for him. Then when you laugh at him he shouts at you! Comedy is not something you create on your own you need
the audience. Ade and I mainly work but our routines by getting two characters
together and then trying them out in front of an audience. I feel really good working with him (Adrian Edmondson): having
been together for five years we're very mutually supportive. If I shit out he
can cover me with an ad-libbed line. We (Rik and Ade) sat down and had a long long talk about careers
a couple of years ago when we did a student drama festival in Durham and got a
slagging from The Guardian. We had a long chat about our responsibility to each
other and decided that we should work together because we do work well
together. But, we'd never hold each other back. I obviously always wanted to be looked at as a kid, very, very
much so. Really embarrassing, ugly things I used to do. If it was my brother or
sister's birthday I'd sulk all day. I remember being six and having my birthday
party. A kid called Sid Prior was talking a lot and gaining all the attention,
so I hit him over the head with the hammer from the children's toolkit I'd just
been given. He got taken home screaming, I was sent upstairs and the party was
over. It's not a new wave, it's not presenting one kind of comedy at
all; the presentation is the point. It's cabaret. Cabaret at the moment is
comedy. That's why the Comic Strip isn't the follow-on to The Goons or Python.
We're not a team. I misread the script (for Northern Lights) and said
"Yes". Alternative comedy is about exploring different areas, not just trying to bring down western civilisation. It's not only a political alternative but, hopefully, an artistic alternative.
I originally intended him (Kevin Turvey) to appear as a real reporter giving a round-up a of the week's events. That would have been very exciting; people not knowing whether he's real - this bloke rambling completely y off the point, totally screwing it up.
One of the purposes of being alternative is to present people with something new and different. I don't mind throwing the audience off; it's very entertaining. It's so much more exciting to see something you don't expect.
I don't like being recognised. I don't like the way people treat you as if you're more important. I'd rather not be interviewed and I wouldn't want to go on Parkinson. There's no point in telling people my favourite food or what I do with my life. It's none of their business and it's not entertaining. I don't want people to be interested in me as me.
I was doing a pilot that Granada TV wanted to make and Alexei
(Sayle) and I went for a meeting. We were supposed to go back in a week with
lots of material, but I thought it was in two weeks. I phoned Alexei one night
and he said he'd written loads. I asked what time we ought to meet and then
discovered the next day. We went on the train and I still didn't have anything
so I thought, "I'll just talk for as long as I can and be as boring as I can so
they don't realise I've got nothing to say!" Because I come from near
Birmingham and I know someone called Turvey, Kevin was born. The programme was
never made but Kevin went down well, so I kept him and eventually he appeared
on Kick Up The Eighties. I'd like to see more people trying to do what we're doing and
keep entertainment live. TV belongs to someone else. It belongs to the BBC,
Oxbridge. It's people like that who tell us what to watch whereas live, it's
the audience who is boss. If you're doing a gag the audience don't like, you're
going to stop half way through and tell them something they do like." I just do what I think is funny. I hope I'm going to be carrying
on doing this until I'm quite old but of course it'll go through phases. In a
couple of years I'll be unfashionable but then a couple of years later I'll be
in fashion again. That doesn't really matter. What really matters is that
people who come to see it have a good laugh. I was always a show-off and liable to get over-excited. But I have got it under control. I now find people who can't control their energy very funny. I am a homely sort of person really.
I think it would be dodgy to get known for just doing one thing. I think you could succeed at it - I mean make money - but for a start I wouldn't like to be known as 'Oh, he's that comedian and he's only good at doing such and such...', anymore than I'd like to be known as 'Oh, he's that comedian...'. This is why I don't do many interviews either, because the more you give away, and the more of the skeleton and mechanics you show of what you're doing, then the less exciting it for the audience, and then the less funny it is.
Maybe that's one pull that I've got when I perform live - hopefully people will come along thinking 'I'm not quite sure what I'm going to see', and there's an element of danger there which is quite exciting.
Tension is important. When you're telling a joke there has to be a moment of complete belief, of complete trust, between the performer and the audience. That moment of complete concentration as satisfying as the laugh itself. You're in another world. If I tell a joke, for you to laugh really well at it you've got to completely forget about everything else and believe it's true, and then I get to the punchline and say 'No, it's not true'. But I'm only just exploring this area now.
I'm not trying to make any serious points, but I've found myself in quite an interesting area over the last year or so. This is going to sound very pretentious, but we seem to be moving into an area of behaving very strangely towards each other - the idea of people being called 'stars' and 'famous', and of people who are then more important than other people - maybe it's something that's just struck home to me. Maybe the plan is to talk about that, and to wreck that a bit.
But it's a very fair criticism when someone says 'You're just abusing the audience, you're just pissing around'. I mean we were in Brighton - we did a terrible gig in Brighton, and if anyone in Brighton is reading this then I'm sorry about the gig! Me and Ade and Nigel weren't prepared at all for it, and people had come along expecting to see The Young Ones. It was okay, but it was going up and down and was a bit queasy. At the very end we did this gag, and as we went to go off, the very last thing I said was 'Goodnight... and oh, thanks for the money!' I thought it would be funny, but it was just dead quiet. You could hear our footsteps as we walked off! And that's a very interesting area - it's like going round to your granny's and getting your knob out. Something you just don't mention on stage is that relationship between the performer and the audience. It's funny, because you can go onstage and say 'fuck', and you can get your knob out like Ade did on The Young Ones tour - and it's very funny. But you don't say things like 'Thanks for giving us all this money' or 'I think you're wankers!'
We used to tour two shows, just the two of us in Ade's car. We got one called The Wart together - a pisstake of Ken Campbell's [23-hour production] The Warp. It was a disaster. No one came to see us. We performed in little village halls, and we did about sixteen shows, but no more than ten people came to see us. We were putting them on at half-past five in the afternoon, with no posters or anything, and nobody would know about it.
I began doing those poems up in Edinburgh, because they had all these poets down at the Fringe Club, and I fancied pretending to be one. I began reading crap poems like they were doing. I did it and people laughed, and I shouted at them to shut up, and that's where it all came from. People thought there's an actual bloke making a twat of himself, and that's when it got really funny because they're giggling and trying to stop themselves, and you glare at them and they can't stop, and they start thinking 'Oh God, this is awful!' and they have a wonderful time. It's the same with Kevin Turvey. That's why I had my name removed from the credits when Kevin was on the telly. There are a lot of people who still think that he actually exists. Kevin's maybe outlived his life because now that The Young Ones has happened people think That bloke looks like him - oh, he's an actor'. But when it first happens it's wonderful. That's why what I'm doing now is me as Rik Mayall - that's the one card left up my sleeve. I can't pretend to be anyone else because my face is known, but I can still pretend to be me. I need to invent a character who is as good as Rik the poet or Kevin, but that I can call me. I need a character who I can stick with for life, because there's nowhere I can go after that.
People write and say 'I think it's (The Young Ones) brilliant, I've got it on video and I watch it every night'. Everyone's videoed it, which I'm pleased about. We were writing it for a video because hopefully it's the kind of thing you can watch three or four times. We did a Young Ones tour which was thrown together in about two weeks because we wanted to get back to doing live stuff again, and loads of little kids came to see us. It became clear the difficulties that families must have. I mean Ade comes on and gets his knob out, and I'm talking about really disgusting things - I'm trying to be filthy and horrible - but what kind of a family show is that? You can't bring your little kids down - they'd have nightmares after seeing me. But the parents come backstage afterwards and say 'It was wonderful, Rik!' And I say 'It was a bit dirty', and they go 'Oh no, don't worry about that. You liked it, Mark didn't you? And their kid would go 'Yes, lots of prick!'"
He (Rick) used to be obsessed with Vanessa Redgrave! Because I
was moving in much more theatrical circles then, where as now it's more
cabaret. The character has to have an obsession, that kind of person, and Cliff
Richard wasn't very fashionable amongst the cognoscenti at the time, and still
isn't. And that's how you make people laugh. I've got tremendous respect for him (John Cleese) because he
pulled out of the Pythons when he thought they weren't being as sharp as they
should. And the last series of Python lacked Cleese. And again with
Fawlty Towers he didn't rush into a second series, and that's been
an inspiration, seeing him being cool about wanted to do stuff at its
best. What we were trying to do was for
the book (Bachelor Boys) to have the same effect as the TV show
does when it's at its best. When the plot's absurdist you really don't know
what to expect next, which makes it exciting, so hopefully the book will be the
same because it's completely out of control. It's like Sphere's actually given
them a lot of money and they've done it all nicely, they've made the book
beautiful... but if you actually read it it's pure bollocks! Some of the thinking behind it (The Young Ones)
when we first did it was to take the piss out of the youth stage where you feel
you're terribly important not that you're not, but you feel you're more
important than everybody else: "every decision I make is absolutely right I
never want to get any older I am right and everybody else is wrong..." It
was just to take the piss out of all that. We tried to make it (the second series of The Young
Ones) exciting and unpredictable but obviously you haven't got the joy
of seeing those characters for the first time, like you had with the first
series. It was actually funny just to see Vyvyan, but now you've got to
concentrate on him doing something funny rather than just being there. We tried
to make the quality of the writing better. Everyone was much more confident as
writers and performers... and we knew there was a huge expectation this time.
Last time it was alright as no one knew what to expect...and the longer it goes
back the more brilliant people think it is. So if anything we tried to change
it by making sure there were many more gags, making sure the gags were better
written and better shot. And if anything we tried to make it nastier, make them
less cute. So there's whole generations of people who have no idea what
seeing a live comedian is like the only way the tradition is being kept up
is in the clubs in the North, maybe. Now, I don't think that that's a shame at
all. In fact, I think it's a really exciting time at the moment because the
audience has no expectations, so the performer can really expand, he's free to
do pretty well whatever he wants... especially with the passing of a lot of the
old boys who remember the old form, like (Tommy) Cooper. It's (Bachelor Boys)smut and I'm proud of it! It's
as though the publishers have given the four boys a lot of money to produce a
book and this is the crap they've come up with. When we all started out, it was at the same time as punk. And
there was the same spirit getting up on stage and shouting and attacking
everything that was sacred. And the one thing we really wanted to attack was
the whole idea of "youth" that had been built up at the time, the idea of
everything being OK when you're young that they always foster in youth
programmes. When I was young I was a complete bastard utterly
selfish, most young people are so I wanted all the characters to be really
selfish. The four boys (in The Young Ones) are rather like a
traditional sitcom family: Mike is the Dad he's smooth and a real prat; Neil
is the Mum he's selfish in a passive sort of way, he moans at people rather
than shout at them; Rick is the daughter really childish and self-obsessed;
and Vyv Is the son you can't say he's a complete bastard 'cos he's just got
no morals at all. That's right, it had a very broad appeal. We didn't want the
four boys to be Young People On The Dole, we wanted them to be students 'cos
everyone hates students. Young people don't like students, students don't like
themselves, parents don't like students 'cos most of them have got a son who's
like one of The Young Ones and really young people liked the
cartoon quality, the slapstick. Not clowns with red noses pretending to fall
over but real Laurel & Hardy-type violence. In the end, all the characters
are horrible but lovable at the same time. There was something inevitable about me becoming an actor.
I was never much good at anything except going on stage. My Dad
and Mum were both Drama teachers, and whenever they were putting on plays I was
in them. Dad used to do a Brecht play he liked every Christmas and I was always
the kid in it. And as it was the only thing I was good at I used to put on
plays at school... and it just so happened that I wasn't the kind of actor who
was able to be straight; I was always getting laughs, and I enjoyed getting
laughs, so I used to play towards that, and that's how it happened. A lot of
other comics go on about always entertaining other kids in the playground. I
was never like that. I felt that we'd explored
everything in that situation (on The Young Ones). Another one was
I don't want the whole thing going stale. I think the statement was made very
coherently and very clearly. There's a throughline from the first programme of
the first series to the last episode of the last series there's a whole
statement there that's made. There's nothing more to say. There are a few jokes
that could be done, but I think the best ones have been told... besides, if you
can do things like that then there's no reason why you can't do more. The only
thing stopping you is if you carry on doing that same thing I didn't want to
turn it into another 'Are You Being Served?' which would get flabby after three
or four series. Originally Rick had an obsession with Vanessa Redgrave I
think that he's a character who needs an obsession. His poems were all about
Vanessa Redgrave or they'd start out about something else and then end up
being about her. But when we transferred to the telly I switched the obsession
to Cliff. Part of it was the anti-Rock and Roll thing, and Cliff represents R
& R. His career spans Rock and Roll. I wanted to play a character who didn't have to shout, because I
can do other things. Alan (B'Stard) is completely smooth, selfish, arrogant and
horrible across between J.R., Flashman and Goebbels but I didn't
want to make him too grotesque. He had to be very plausible and charming
too. I don't think it's very productive if people see what a normal
boring bloke I am. Kevin (Turvey) comes from some of the characteristics of people
in the part of the country I used to live in Redditch. They do like to
talk and get worked up about things. I find Rick harder to do, because I am
like him, but I hide it because it's so embarrassing. If I allowed it to come
out I'd get beaten up all the time! He's a mass of all the things I repressed
when I was at school, the deep feelings of inadequacy I had because I thought I
was a bit of a farty wanker who couldn't get a girl! I never realised that The Young Ones would have
such longevity anyway. People still ask if we're going to do another series,
but we won't because that joke's been done. There was talk of doing a Christmas
special, but I think people might be disappointed because it wouldn't be as
good as their imagination. The New Statesman isn't a career move. I've never
done anything just because I felt I should do it, but because I really wanted
to. I know that some people will be expecting me to be Kevin Turvey or Rick
from The Young Ones in this, but I've never really aimed at a
specific audience. I've just done things I think are funny. I'm being used more
as an actor than I have before and, for me, the experimentation in this series
is acting straight in order to get much funnier laughs. That was why I wanted to make him (Alan B'Stard) ugly. I want to
make all my characters ugly. Whenever I play someone I disapprove of, I make
him ugly, but they said, "Stop pulling faces and be cool." I'm quite a political animal, but, although I'm 30 next year, I
still think of myself as a kid, and Laurence and Maurice are definitely
grown-ups. Laurence, particularly, is like a father figure to me. They speak
with authority and have opinions that seem to carry weight - and they don't
mind what people think of them, which is a very grown-up thing as
well. There's a bit of Alan (B'Stard) in all of us, and I can get rid of my bit by acting him. He's the absolute opposite of everything I've tried to be since becoming a parent. That's another role that's changed me, but I'm not acting that one. It may sound pretentious, but it would be true to say that I don't find real life offers enough stimulation. That's what's so marvellous about being an actor. You can do anything. I mean, you go into this business because you want to live in fantasyland. I'm a very mildmannered soul really, but I think if I were working in the City or as a bus conductor or whatever I'd be awful because I wouldn't have a release. Jack Nicholson summed it up. I think it was Jack Nicholson. He said that it was great being an actor because you can do anything for five minutes without any responsibility. I mean I don't normally get the chance to break windows, or blackmail people or burn down printworks, but I do as Alan B'Stard. It gives you a chance to behave on the wide scale! If you want to have a good time, be an actor. That goes for any part of the entertainment industry. I mean, rock 'n' rollers have been having a good time for years and I suppose most actors of my generation had rock stars as their heroes. Theirs were the lifestyles that we wanted to emulate. Rocking Little Richard has been my inspiration for years. I've a photograph taken with him that has pride of place in my study. What Little Richard does is to get an audience on a high right from the start, and I think it's true to say that's what I like to do. Other people say you should take it slowly and gradually build up, but I like to start high and aim to get higher. I didn't want any of the characters (on The Young Ones) to be able to communicate with each other. They were all shouting about themselves all at the same time, and that's where the humour was. I thought it very cool, brilliant, when I first started calling myself Rik, and then I decided it was utterly embarrassing, cringe, cringe, but it would have been even more embarrassing and pretentious to change it back. I'm not the sort of person who can sit at a pub table like
Robbie Coltrane or Ben Elton and be brilliantly funny, telling witty stories
for half an hour. My humour is more to do with performance, I have to think it
out. I remember in primary school that, for some reason, all the
girls used to love to play kiss chase, but the boys didn't. I was the only one
that was interested. The girls would come up to me every playtime and say
'fancy a game of kiss chase?' Of course I was dying to play it, but
I'd act really cool and say... 'oh, go on then, why
not?'. I've always thought the only way to get anywhere is to form your own gang and push your way through. I did it (Jackanory) really because it was so unlike what you'd expect. Although I enjoy storytelling, I enjoy doing things people don't like me doing. Just being bloody-minded really! I haven't really liked any of the characters I've played, but I think he's (Alan B'Stard) the character I like the least - although I possibly feel the sorriest for. He doesn't know it, but he's desperately lonely. But he's such a bastard! What do you want me to say? I don't want to marry him. It's always a disappointment to people. That's why I don't do
many interviews. They get very depressed when they discover I'm not this mad,
funny bastard. I don't feel any pressure to be funny 24 hours a day. I think it
would be tragic as a professional comedian to feel you had to be funny in your
private life too. My humour is mostly to do with performance. I'm not like Ben
Elton who can sit at a pub table and be brilliantly funny for 30 minutes. I've
never really been naturally funny. I was very impressed with Adrian the first time I met him. He
was very cool. Adrian didn't like Ben though. Whenever he saw him he'd chase
him down the corridor shouting 'There goes that Elton bloke!' We all sat down
one night and decided that, if we were going to achieve anything, we'd have to
form our own cliquey set. It worked. Ben would write plays and Adrian and I
would star in them. I know it sounds unfashionable but I suddenly feel old and
content. I realised quite recently that I'm finally free of the pressures of
adolescence, wondering what clothes to wear and what music to listen to. I
mean, what are Bros saying to married men of 30 like me? That's one of the reasons I don't like doing chat shows - the character comes along and says 'I'm Rik and I'm crazy.' But the real me isn't and it gives the game away.
I wanted to do a character on the telly which would just waste
television time, and be incompetent. I had my name taken off the credits
because I was addicted to this form of performance where the audience thought
it was genuinely happening. So Colin Gilbert and I wrote the monologues, and
the credits just said, "Kevin Turvey" and the key to its success was that
fifty percent of the audience thought he really existed. I had this basic idea that I wanted to live in a flat with Ade
Edmondson, so I went to Ben Elton and said, let's write it (Filthy Rich
and Catflap) together. Ben being the kind of writer that he is, wrote
ninety-five percent of it, so I had my name taken off the front. It was rushed
we went into the studio too early Ben had a hernia when he was writing
them so he was in hospital for a lot of the time. I used to do shows after school with mates it was also a way
of getting off games. We used to do absurdist drama, mainly Waiting
for Godot, a bit of Pinter, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead, Endgame, The Real Inspector Hound
good fun to perform, and would have quite a bit of an impact on the teachers
and the parents. Those plays are quite significant because you can be very
serious by being funny... that was mainly where I developed my distaste for
being serious. |
I'm still very proud of it (Filthy Rich and
Catflap) I think it's as funny and probably more useful than
The Young Ones particularly the last three programs. I think
it's the most neolistic piece of telly we've ever done it's completely
anti-television, it's anti-fame, it's anti the media generally, and
anti-privilege; whereas The Young Ones was anti rock-and-roll and
anti complacent youth my feeling was that it was trying to destroy the
stranglehold that rock-and-roll had on kids because in the 1920s, there was
no rock-and-roll, there was politics, and kids used to go out and talk to each
other at meetings, and things like that. Now it's not only rock-and-roll that
does that to kids but television itself bland entertainment itself and
Filthy Rich and Catflap was trying to attack that. And we wanted
to be as ugly and unpleasant as possible, which we did in The Young
Ones, and Filthy... was having a proper grown-up crack at
that. It looked more like grown-ups being unpleasant on television I think
maybe the calculation backfired a little bit... you write something ironically,
assuming that everyone feels the same as you do, and they don't see the irony
because they see things differently from you. I also read a lot of books about murderers and tyrants and evil
people but in the end it was my haircut which made me grasp the role. I simply
had the parting changed on my hair and there I was a smooth,
evil-looking politician (Alan B'Stard). I was brought up to be a good boy and proud of myself so I suppress all the things about me that are bad.
Being nice on screen deeply embarrasses me. Of course you want to play baddies. Comedy is very close to frightening people. I find it therapeutic to play people I might become if I didn't expunge them through acting.
At 12 I started doing school plays which made our gang the coolest in school.
I got this blonde wig and things (for Blackadder)
and was quite pleased with the way I looked - but I was still an arsehole, a
sort of good-looking arsehole. I think Ade thinks I'm a complete git really. He is one of the
few people who can make me blush. He knows when I'm telling lies to try and
impress people. (Rik's views on doing adverts in '91) I would rather my audience
knew that when I was speaking to them I was telling the truth. This seems odd
when comedy is all about lying, but at least they know that I am not going to
abuse our relationship in order to trick money out of them for somebody
else. I'm too loud and shouty for most cinema things. I think I have a
body of work which will allow the audience to say, "Well maybe Rik will fuck up
this time, but that's OK because we know that sometimes he doesn't." This might
make me more lazy, but it also makes me a little less scared and able to say,
"Well all right, I'll have a go at this project." I did enjoy making the film
(Drop Dead Fred), but my home is in telly and theatre. They (the writers of Drop Dead Fred) saw me being
whipped by Mrs Thatcher when I was wearing union jack boxer shorts. And they
thought "Well, he looks cheap, he'll do anything". It is hard to explain the ironic jokes, but that was a dour time
(at university with Ade), when everyone was doing their political theatre and
being very puritanical. So we'd go around saying: "Showbiz! Showbiz! We're
going to be stars!" We'd dress up for parties and pretend to be on the phone to
the press and give each other signed photographs at Christmas. One of our jokes
began: "When I'm being interviewed about my new film and my new television
series and my new play in the West End..." and now, 14 years later, it's
happening. We (Rik and Ade) were kind of proud that we weren't part of the
Sixties; we were too young to be hippies, too old to be punks and not very
interested in the political stuff going on red this and red that, and Marxism
for three-year-olds. We never fitted in anywhere, not academically, not
politically. We just liked good-time theatre. We (Rik and Ade) came from so left of field; we were surreal,
not political. We did get accused of violence. People said: "You're just
hitting each other and what's so funny about that?" And we said: "I don't know,
but the audience laughs. (Acting is) the only think I could ever do. It was considered
quite wild that I was going to do a drama degree. She (Lise Mayer) knew about the way we used to live in
Manchester and she said one night: "Wouldn't it be funny if that was on the
stage... the way Ade labels his food?" And we picked up: "Wouldn't it be funny
if Nigel (Planer) was this hippie... and wouldn't it be funny if Peter
(Richardson) was this smooth character..." It (The Young Ones was about laughing at the
futility of ranting against Thatcher. About being in a hopeless position. You
don't just wear a badge and bring down the government... there are all these
kids with all this bravery and strength and misdirected energy. That's why
people like them are prepared to make tits of themselves. The difference
between comedy in America and comedy here is that there you stand up with the
comedian and laugh at another target; here the comedian stands up and you laugh
at him. The Young Ones were largely a bunch of prats, and that is
why they were so endearing. Then, by a huge ironic mistake, they became cuddly
characters, in the same way that Steptoe did really, the most horrible man you
can imagine and Alf Garnett and Tony Hancock. I never thought I was looked suave (as Alan B'Stard from
The New Statesman); I thought I looked the worst dickhead. How can
a man with a bouffant hair style look sexy? But then, there are people who
think Michael Heseltine is sexy... I saw both of Ben's (Elton) plays being hammered in the press
while they were full to the gunnels with audiences. These writers don't seem to
like what the people like, that is their problem. I don't know anything about
the West End, but people there have this safe little structure and perhaps will
come to see us (in Waiting for Godot)and find that out. We've (Rik and Ade) done three years studying drama and in
between us we have written more plays than these people have ever seen, so we
know a bit about what we're doing. But then, we do rather thrive on being
outsiders on being fat and middle-aged and still having people think we are a
nuisance. That is a tremendous thrill. We may have to move up the artistic
social scale to keep that thrill of being naughty... have to start going to art
exhibitions and the Royal Academy. Just for the thrill. No, maybe not. Maybe
the West End is the last place we can be naughty. I think it (Bottom)is about me and Ade getting
older. Personal stuff. About our relationship which is also what Godot is
about, those guys' relationships. We (Rik and Ade) both went to drama school. So we know what
we're doing, okay? Our (Rik and Ade) comedy actually developed through a love of
Beckett of Godot in particular and a lot of our early stuff was Beckett
piss-takes. I have always been drawn to Beckett. I like the simplicity. I like
the honesty. I like the vulgarity, the violence. I like the uniqueness of it
the way it doesn't fit in and it annoys people. Our style (Rik and Ade) is
actually very Beckettian. We're (Rik and Ade) actually doing a very traditional version
(of Waiting for Godot). I hope people won't be disappointed that
we're not being groovier... I think the best comedians share the philosophical vision
expressed in this play (Waiting for Godot). "They give birth
astride of a grave..." that's why you get into comedy because you have
that vision of life, that desperation, and you are telling jokes to avoid
thinking about death... If you have no religion and you know you're going to
die, you know they'll be nothing else, and you try somehow to avoid that
truth... That's what Vladimir and Estragon are doing passing the time so
they don't have to hear all the dead voices. They gave me a limo to come here, and the guy driving it said he'd just been driving Mel Gibson around and he was saying he just didn't have any privacy or private life. If that's what being a big film star means, then I don't want that. I don't want to be taken away from my audience and I don't want to have to think each film would be so important. Plus, you'd spend your whole life being interviewed and doing chat shows.
It's nice to go to America to make a film 'cause the actual process is fun and it's a chance to explore myself a bit. But it was never a burning ambition. I never wanted to go and 'crack America', like Cliff tried to... and didn't. It would take an awful lot for me to go back. It's got nothing to do with my experiences of America, which were very, very good. But I like having a good time, which is why I've designed my life like this, and making a movie involves going to the gym for six months, and if you're going to do it you've got to be really serious about it. I'd like film to be a part of my life so I could go and do it every couple of years. When I'm happy with the role.
Most good film actors worth their salt can break your heart and make you cry just by raising an eyebrow. That's not really my discipline, that's too small for me. But Fred isn't constricted like that and that's one of the reasons I went for it.
The kind of comedians I like are mainly people who say 'Look! I'm an arsehole! Laugh at me!' That tends to be the way I operate, that's the area I'm interested in rather than someone saying 'Hey! I'm hip! Come with me and let's laugh at someone!' I'm more interested in people making genuine arseholes of themselves... But it's not me, it's a performance. That's why I don't really like doing interviews. 'Cause I don't like people to think that I'm... normal.
I told the writers about the reservations I had about film
(Drop Dead Fred). I felt I was a telly and theatre man really,
because I pull big faces and shout a lot of the time. I'm a very cautious performer. Although this sounds very wanky
and celeby, I don't want to let my audience down, because there's a certain
thing they expect and want from me. Theatre and TV are performance mediums, and I'm a performer.
Whereas film is a director's and an editor's medium, and I think that lack of
control did scare me. But you can gain that control if you know what you're
doing. It was a whole new experience for me (filming Drop Dead
Fred), and I just wanted to keep my head down and work out what I was
doing. I mean, just look at the line-up of actresses I was working with. Carrie
Fisher, Marsha Mason. Even little Ashley (playing Phoebe Cates' character as a
little girl) was brilliant - and she's only six! She'd say: "You've got to
stand there. That's your mark". I'd say: "No, no, Ashley, I was here". And
she'd tell me: "No, you stood there on the other angle". I'd ask the crew, and
they'd say: "She's right, Rik". Thanks, Ashley (whack). I must admit I prefer TV and theatre. In a TV studio and on stage I can have a live audience in, and that way I can tell whether they think the jokes are funny or not.
I dont want to be a star because I like my private life kept private.
I like to have fun. As a kid I wanted to be naughty, but I was
too cowardly to be really naughty. I was the guy who stood next to the really
naughty boy, persuading him to do the really naughty things! I was a bit like
Fred in the movie. I was quite hyperactive as a kid until I was able to show
off in plays at school. I wasn't disciplined enough to be sporty but I did have
too much energy. A lot of Fred was what I was kind of like as a kid, as was
Rick in The Young Ones. It's nice to go to America to make a film. The actual process is
fun and it gave me chance to see what I could do. I was scared of working in
their medium. I consider film to be an American medium, really, but I was
amazed and surprised at how welcoming they were, and how good to work with they
are. I thought they would say, 'Who's this English git?' But some of the actors
there couldn't believe how I had got this role, the title
role! Yeh, I'd like films to be part of my life, but they can be quite
an upheaval, and I do like playing in front of a live audience. I don't think
I'm a very brilliant film actor. I could be in certain kinds of characters. I'd
probably be happier further down the line, say like third on the
bill. I tell you the best thing for me would be to get a character
together, like for example Inspector Clouseau, and then make a series of so
many films playing that character. I'd be much happier doing that than
constantly trying to invent new characters for a film. I think my main reservation about film is that there isn't an audience there. In all my TV stuff I always have a studio audience. Obviously in the theatre I have an audience, if you can get one, and that's what I respond to best.
Theatre and TV, I think, are performers' mediums and I'm a performer. Film is a director's, and an editor's, and a producer's medium. And I think that that lack of control did scare me, but you can gain control if you know what you're doing, and you have to find out what it's all about in order to gain that kind of control.
Nobody was sure at the end of the last series (of The New
Statesman whether or not B'Stard would be back. There was a strong
feeling that Alan was very much a 1980s figure. He was most certainly one of
Thatcher's boys. But by moving Alan into Europe we can give him a fresh lease
of life. European issues are the serious ones on the agenda these days. I like playing a complete bastard, so I don't have to be one in real life. Fortunately, over the past 12 years, I've been in work pretty constantly. But if, say, two months or more go by without any work, then I start to go a bit wonky. I begin behaving unpredictably, become moody and start feeling unhealthy, so Barbara, my wife, pushes me into getting work.
The only responsibility you'll ever have in your life apart from your work, is to your family. There's no more: "Oh it doesn't matter if I lose the house, I'll just bum around the world in a tent!" That's not an option any more - thank God, because I don't want to do it, anyway.
It hasn't happened to me yet, but I would now take a job simply to earn money for my family.
I resent the way that, if you are a success in this business, it's taken as read that it precludes you from leading an ordinary life. I haven't changed.
I was nervous because I'm largely two-dimensional, at least most
of the stuff I've done is. I've always stopped doing one thing and started
doing another The Young Ones to Filthy, Rich and
Catflap, to The New Statesman, to the American film
Drop Dead Fred, to Bottom. I'm looking for things
that stimulate me. What I don't want is for it to look like Rik's decided he's
grown up and he's gone straight. I almost always work in tandem. I don't work alone, I don't
really enjoy it. I work with Ade if I'm writing Bottom, or Marks
and Gran if I'm doing Alan B'Stard in The New Statesman. For
Rik Mayall Presents, the director, Nick Hamm, was a friend from
university and I trusted him. I need someone else to bounce off, really. Everyone knows what to expect when they see us (Rik and Ade)
performing together. He's violent, I'm a bit of a wimp, and we both get very
loud. Off stage is very different. Our relationship is far more finely
balanced. He brings me up if I'm feeling down and if he's low, I bring him up.
When we write together, if he laughs at something, I know it's funny and if I
laugh at something, he understands the same. We are very much an equal
partnership. I was put early (in Manchester University) to get a free place.
Mum and Dad were both teachers so they knew how to work the system. I was out
the other side and in London by the time I was twenty. It was fantastic fun. We
lived in Limes Cottage, and we based The Young Ones on that. It
was a hold. Boys straight out of home have no idea how to do anything. We
couldn't cook, couldn't do any washing and we burnt all the furniture. A friend
rode a motorbike up the staircase and we couldn't get it down for two months.
And we used to go down to the laundrette and look sad in front of the little
old lady to get our washing done for us. At school we did Waiting for Godot and
Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead, plays which had laughs in
and had a significance to teenage boys. It was great making The Young Ones. They were good
days. But then they've all been good days. You become more conscious of everything when you have kids of
your own. Some things are not so funny anymore, particularly when you see
things like Bosnia and you tend to think there are more important things than
making people laugh. Rosie and Sid (Rik's two oldest children) are quite
sophisticated televisually because they've seen daddy being hit by Uncle Adrian
and they know it's not true, they know that everything they see is people
acting. But I wouldn't let them watch the news, because what you see is real
and you don't know what you might see next. My character, Micky (Micky Love), is not based on one particular game-show host, he's a little bit of all the ones I've ever seen. I've been doing the research for him all my life. I still see game shows now and then, although I don't exactly rush home to catch them.
My hair was coloured for about two months and I put on a stone and a half during filming (Micky Love). My children, Rosie and Sid, thought my weight gain was really funny. But my wife, Barbara, wasn't quite so keen.
Granada TV came to me and said, 'Do you want to do some television plays?' and I said, 'Yes'. Then it developed into film (Rik Mayall Presents). Obviously, as a performer, I'm showing off, with three characters. Micky Love was a much more get-your-teeth-into-it character than Greg in Briefest Encounter because Greg has to be enigmatic, and you have to not know whether he's a loony or not. I'm proud of my work in all three of them, and especially Micky Love. I think Micky's a well-rounded, well-executed character, and it's not what you expect from Rik Mayall, really. (Director Nick Hamm) Nick said no, make him (Micky Love) nice, he's a nice guy and he believes in what he says. It made him a much more tragic figure.
I think that when I come to a drama, I instinctively say, 'What's wrong with this guy, what's bad about him, what do we laugh at in him?
Everything I've always done has always been badly received initially. The Young Ones was hammered when it first came out. Filthy Rich and Catflap disappeared without trace, and then The New Statesman was hammered because it wasn't The Young Ones or Catflap. It's only when you come to the second series that people say, 'Oh, everyone else likes it. OK, I'd better like it then'.
I've always been a populist. I do stuff that makes me laugh. You have to surrender to it, and if you do you'll have a good time. Most comedians do it because they need to laugh as well, for whatever reason.
Just as long as I can do a bit of film, a bit of TV, a bit of live theatre, and a bit of sunbathing in Devon, that'll do me, for as long as I've got.
(on Bottom) The only thing we've got on our side is
ratings. Any good double act and I think we (Rik and Ade) are a good
double act is two parts of one person. (Bottom Live is) about two gits who don't know
anything about women. It's not saying it's our opinion about women. We'd (Rik and Ade) love to write a stage play called The
Duke of Kidderminster's Problem, with me as the duke and Ade as the
butler. It'd be the same sort of relationship: lots of violence and "where are
the porn mags?" I'm a difficult person to interview. Everything I have to say is
in my performance. I don't like to give too much away. These three films (Rik Mayall Presents 1) are
anecdotes about mistakes or jokes gone wrong. But they are also about
loneliness. When I think about it, all of my characters, especially the ones
I've created myself, are about loneliness or an inability to
communicate. Much of my comedy is performance or character led, not gag led.
It's always a disappointment to people who meet me for the first time that I'm
not as funny as they expected. I'm very defensive because I want to keep my life ordinary.
That's a very important word in my life ordinary. My ordinary
upbringing, my ordinary family life. I have a yearning for excitement, which is
satisfied by my job, but I also have a yearning to be ordinary. Interviews are really damaging to me. I don't want people to see
me as I really am because the work loses half its power. If people know too
much about me, they will be less surprised by the jokes. I did do a commercial for a chocolate bar called 54321 when I
first started, but I don't do them now. To be honest, it makes me feel a bit
unclean. I feel I always need to be able to communicate immediately with an
audience. If they see me telling a lie for money, I lose a lot to their
trust. I don't know why I'm attracted to failed, horrible sociopaths.
You could say that's what I'm really like, but with my hand on my heart, that's
not true. You could say in order to socialise myself, I have to repress these
nasty things in me, so they come out on stage. You could say, probably more
accurately, that my style of performance is very revealing you see the
hidden secrets of my characters. It makes the audience think they're in the
know. (In The Good Woman of Setzuan as a child) I had to
put on raggedy old clothes and it didn't matter how messy I got in fact
the messier the better. I had to go on stage, open a dustbin, ruffle through
the rubbish, find a bar of chocolate, eat it, get as much chocolate over my
face as possible, show my face to the audience, and get a big laugh. And I just
thought, this is paradise - this is what I want for the rest of my
life. (During childhood) There was lots of countryside, lots of
getting on my bike and going off for the day and lots of climbing trees with my
mates, but mostly we were a family family, We were just all together, all the
time. We enjoyed each other's company and didn't really need
outsiders. There will be people who will be disappointed because they
(Rik Mayall Presents) are not out and out comedies, but I hope
they will get as much pleasure from the stories as from the laughs. This is the
most exciting aspect of my career at present. I realize now I've only scratched
the surface of what I can do. A lot of comedy is about passing the time in the waiting room. I
don't know what we're waiting for, and I don't know what's on the other side, but what do we do while we're all sitting around bored and feeling slightly nervous? We may as well have a good time and entertain people. I enjoy
entertaining them, they enjoy being entertained. What I like best in all the world is hearing the sound of laughter. Really. I'm not trying to do anything spectacular except to change the fabric of our society and bring down the Government. |