Hands Up!
The People’s Poet is dead: Rik Mayall, a British comedian best-known (if at all) to American audiences from the film Drop Dead Fred, and the BBC series Blackadder and The Young Ones, has died at age 56.
The Young Ones, a cartoonishly violent early ’80’s BBC sitcom about mismatched university students, with a comic sensibility perhaps best described as “Iggy and the Three Stooges” (complete with a musical guest each week – the better to scam government money, as “variety shows” got substantially more dosh from the Beeb than did “sitcoms”) was where I first encountered Mayall.
His preening and pretentious, yet pathologically-needy and desperately-lonely “anarchist poet” Rick (seriously, nobody did bug-eyed, frothing neurosis better) was at once hilarious, repulsive, sympathetic, and uncomfortably close to home.
RIP, and condolences to his family.
This is sad news indeed. The Young Ones is one of my all-time favorite shows; I can’t remember an TV show that felt as subversive to me when it aired as that one. And even though Nigel Planer was everybody else’s favorite Young One*, I always liked Mayhill best. Best episodes: the one where they’re on University Challenge, and the one where the flood traps them with an axe-weiling homicidal maniac.
RIP, People’s Poet.
*Though many years later Planer would ruin all other audiobooks forever for me by reading the DIscworld novels for Isis Audio. I would rather listen to him read Lord sand Ladies for the upteenth time than listen to anyone else read anything.Report
It will surprise exactly no one to learn that Young Ones was extremely influential to my still-developing sense of humor at that time. It really was a live-action cartoon, mixing highbrow and lowbrow and slapstick with abandon.
And yeah, Rik (ideally paired with Vyvyan, played by his long-running comedy partner Ade Edmondson) was the best. This definitely made me sad.
Remember when they discovered oil in the basement, and Mike was exploiting them to dig it, so Rik tried to foment a workers’ revolution, complete with a benefit concert (“Doctor Marten’s BOOTS”)?
Favorite episode: Probably “Video Nasty” (YES WE’VE GOT A VIDEO!). It had The Damned in it, lots of Alexi Sayle, and this wonderful exchange:
“…A vampire!”
“….In a parcel!”
“…In the kitchen!”
Neil (mournfully, of course): “Hate mail…”
And I STILL say “God, I’m so BORED. We might as well be sitting ’round listening to Genesis.”Report
Oh, and: “Dear Mr. Echo…”Report