by Rik Mayall
So long (that means best wishes),
Richard Mayall.
MANCHESTER
This is a charming story. You’ll love this viewer, I was recording something or other in Manchester (a place somewhere in the north of England—quite unpleasant) with some great showbusiness friends of mine whose names momentarily escape me. I knew I was working that particular day because I woke up with the make up girl. I knew she was the make up girl because she had my wake up call (this is what acters use to wake up in the morning) written in biro* on her back. And here’s a word of advice for you if you’re going to write your wake up call on the make up girl’s back, always make sure you put her name there as well so as to avoid confusion, impoliteness and fights. And put Wendy I love you or Christine or whatever her name is so that when she sees it and reads it backwards in the mirror in the bathroom later she’ll feint with affection so you can always tap up her up for a loan or lay her aside for a shag later. The only bitch is when you bump into her in the street a few months afterwards and you don’t know who the fucking hell she is. Or worse, she might be carrying your child. Fans are bad enough when they are carrying your children. The very great Bobby Ball himself once gave me this: “Rik, never ever ever fuck the fans.” So all I ever say to fans in bed is, “remember, this never happened, bird. I’ve got relatives in the police.” He’s a great man, Bobby Ball, and always will be. And Tommy of course. I have never had sex with either of them.
So, anyway, when a pregnant make up lady confronts me in the street, my heart turns black and my wallet does a triple back somersault. Before this wretched fame thing took over I could always protect myself with a different name. I was Kevin Carruso for six years. The child support agency is after him big style. It’s important if you want to be a top international acter that you learn the ropes.
Anyway, back to the make up girl in the hotel room in Manchester. (And yes in case you’re wondering, repeatedly and rather well and about half a pint but don’t tell Miriam for fuck’s sake.) I was chatting warmly and entertainingly to her about how I had gone to university in Manchester and she was thrilled to bits-tiny but nicely formed bits with breasts—and said what a fun guy I was and how nice I was and good in bed/big cock etc.
“But you look so much better in the flesh than you do on the telly,” she said to me.
“It’s just a make up thing,” I breathed. “I studied in Manchester. I got a double first in Philosophy and Ancient Chinese Literature and the house that I lived in here, in this very town, was the inspiration for the house in The Young Ones.”
“The Young Ones,” she ejaculated, “that legendary situation comedy that exploded in the cultural wasteland of the early eighties like a five megaton nuclear warhead thereby forever changing the face of British broadcasting and leaving a big fuck off crater in the middle of it?”
“The very same.”
And the make up girl—we’ll call her Wendy for safety (her real name was Carol)—asked if we could go and take a look at the house later that day after I had finished doing my edge cutting acting in whatever it was I was there to act in [get someone to look this up, publisher]. So we did. We got a taxi and I paid for all of it—I didn’t split it 50:50 or anything. When we got there, we got out of the car. It was as if the rain was falling. No, the rain was falling. We got out of the car. Sorry, done that bit*. Look, we got out of the car and it was raining, okay?
“This is what saved BBC2 from being cancelled,” I told her. But when I looked round, she was crying.
“What’s the matter?” I asked careingly. And she pointed with her hand. Like that. And I looked up and saw what she had just seen. They had knocked down my Young Ones house! She fell to her knees. What could I do? What do you think? It seemed to help a bit. Then I walked off into the sunset (although it was still raining) and I never saw her again. Good job too. You should have seen her teeth. Disgusting.
Manchester University drama department didn’t know what had hit it when I arrived. (This is years before. Not with the make up bird. That story’s over now. File closed. Move on. You’ll thank me for being brutal with you viewer, when you hit some really serious wordage later on when I spill the beans (this means sing like a canary†) on where the corpses are really buried. It’s a blood drenched, charnel house of bodies and still-quivering organs when we really get up to our elbows in the viscera and gristle of British light entertainment. In the meantime I’m going to tell you about the young Rik Mayall in Manchester when he meets Adrian Edmondson (a towering inferno of genius-even more towering and inferning then me—and I don’t say things like that lightly. You’re hanging with the big boys now. I remember once when we were writing a Bottom series together (an earth-shattering genre-busting situation comedy that has been butchered, raped and copied by every successful comedy series since), I say we, really it was all just Adrian, but he kindly let me put my name on it as well so that I could earn some more money in order to meet my payment schedule to him*. Anyway, we were sitting in a pub in Soho. Adrian had the pad and the biro and it was my job to buy all the drinks and the food and fetch it all from the bar and clear it away and fetch coffee and cigarettes and pay for Adrian’s executive massage around the corner afterwards. It was so funny. Honestly, we were roaring. And other people in the strip club, [delete this], pub looked around and saw the two of us and commented, “Look, there are the two giants of British comedy, laughing together—what great mates they must be and what great lives they must live as they ride the out of control rollercoaster of hilarious crazy good times together.” And they were right, of course. And the reason we were laughing so much was—honestly you’re going to love this, we [fill in amusing and heart-warming anecdote here].)
I was terribly excited on my first day at Manchester University. I put on my student’s uniform, got there early and bagged the best place so that the lecturer would see that I was the keenest. At King’s School, we were all very well brought up and when Sir came into the class, we all stood up. So when Professor John Prudhoe, the man who invented the Manchester University drama department, came into the lecture theatre, I, of course, stood up. But I was the only one. No one else moved. They just sat there looking at me. Then one of them laughed. He didn’t even have a proper student hair cut. He had long wispy nasty hair and had his feet on the desk and he was smoking a cigarette. Smoking a cigarette in lesson! In LESSON!!! Was he suicidal? He would get at least six for that. But he didn’t seem to care, and Sir didn’t seem to bother about him either. This fellow student was the Adrian I hadn’t yet met and he just stared and pointed at me and he said, “look, look!” and everyone started laughing at me. I mean, I know I’m a comedy genius but I didn’t really know what the gag was. Had my fountain pen leaked ink or something? And then I saw that the Professor was laughing at me as well. Ice ran down my spine. So this was university was it? I thought to myself. Anarchy, no laws…no future? Punk type pop music? What sort of world had I got myself into? I quickly unbuttoned the top button of my shirt and tried out some swear words. I was evolving. This pack of freedom-fighting wolves had a new brother with them. It was Rik. Okay, I couldn’t pronounce my Rs very well, but I knew that as soon as I reached the onset of puberty, I wasn’t going to shave. I was only seventeen. Who was this innocent young seventeen year old I could see them thinking. We’ll have him for breakfast. Sweet seventeen and never been kissed? I don’t think so. You’ve got a Rik Mayall on your hands I said to them. Well, I didn’t actually. Not out loud. But I wrote it in my notebook. My special secret One for “certain” occasions.
The wild terrifying unconventional non-sexist hell-for-leather student accommodation that I collectively occupied in Manchester with my three undergraduate amigos, Lloyd*, Ivor and Max, was like living in Golgotha. No, Sodem. No fuck ’em. No fuck it. No fuck it all. Bollocks. Oh Christ, look, we were just dangerous guys who lived life to the max right, and pushed everything to the hilt despite the endless homework and cleaning and squabbles about the washing up rot
a. I’d like to see Charles Bronson survive in that frightful little house in East Allington that only had one name, Limes Cottage. Anything could happen and often did. Sometimes we wouldn’t even do the hoovering for a fortnight and sometimes we’d come home from the chip shop and instead of putting the fish and chips on plates, we’d eat them out of newspaper on the floor just like we were really working class. It was extraordinary. Regularly, I quite simply wouldn’t do my homework when I was supposed to. We were the hard guys, the four horsemen of the apocalypse. There was strong drink, sex, and drugs all over the place (that none of us ever took). We even got dirty videos out from the video store. And Max’s mate rode his motobike* up the stairs, turned left and went straight into my bedroom and parked it on my bed. He did. He bloody did. I’m not lying. This was serious. No way could I accept that. There was going to be a fight. And there was and I was so badly beaten up that I nearly had to go to hospital. I’m not going to put his name down here. Not because I’m scared or I can’t remember. Just because I’m hard.
Every Monday night at Manchester University, the drama department hosted what was called Studio Night which was where all the students who went to lectures and knew how to write used to put on their very own productions. Anyone could get up and do their thing†—like a sex machine man—sorry, wrong format. Someone might think of a monologue or a play or a love affair with a chair. That was where me and Ade started. Or rather, where Ade let me start with him. No, that sounds a bit rude. It was where Ade and I started to do our thing together. Not that we had a thing or anything. We’ve never done it to each other. Not like that. Well, not in any way at all, really. Adrian is far too great a talent in the world of international showbusiness for me to ever dare assume that I might try to cop a feel. So, just leave it now and move onto the next paragraph. Pretend you didn’t read any of that last bit. It’s just a blanket denial, okay?
So, me and Ade started doing our stuff together on a Monday night at the studio until we thought bollocks to the Marxists (some of the students were terrifically well educated) and went into Manchester and started doing our thing in pubs where we got paid and got to drink more. We were known as things like Twentieth Century Coyote and Deathsquad Theatre Company. We learnt how to be funny (although Adrian was always funnier than me) and how to live life without rules.
If it wasn’t for Adrian I would never have met Little Ben-Elton. Me and Ade were in the third year and one day I masculined my way into the drama department and heard this disgusting squealing animal noise. Jesus, it’s a fan I suddenly didn’t think because I wasn’t huge famous yet although I was deeply popular in Manchester. Doctor Nightclub they used to call me. Anyway, one of the things that I love about Ade in a butch matey kind of hard sort of way is the way that he likes to beat people up, and sure enough there was a churning maelstrom of blood and flesh and good looking fists and savage well placed kicks to the face of a weeping screaming little schoolboy.
“Cool thing to do, Adrian Edmondson,” I said.
“Get me a drink, this is thirsty work,” he said. So I did, even though it was only nine o’clock in the morning and he had already had four pints (but he has never had a drink problem*).
“Here you are, great mate Adrian,” I said giving him his beer.
“Fuck off,” he said amusingly.
“What are you doing?”
The violence stopped and the quivering little mass whimpered and recoiled and tried to make itself even smaller in the corner of the corridor. Adrian swung around and locked me in an El Alamein of a glance.
“Look,” he slathered, “the new first years have arrived and look at this one. It’s a fuck pig.”
“Ha ha ha, great joke, Adrian Edmondson,” I said, “let me help you to stamp on him.”
But at that moment the little mite looked up at me and said, “Help me, good looking third year, I’m Little Ben-Elton. I just want to study drama for three years and behave decently and become one of Britain’s foremost dramatists. I’ve got an enormous output of avant guard work which means that I like to write a lot.”
“Hey, Adrian Edmondson,” I said with compassion for the little tot, “why don’t you eat my thesis and take my wallet and cigarette lighter so you can go to the pub and do some more of your drinking which you do so well although you’re definitely not an alcoholic.”
“All rightey dokey,” quipped Ade and it was as though a whole new seam of comedy had been mined in a flash. I’m looking at Eddie Hitler I thought. And with one more good-natured snap of Ben’s thigh, Ade (although even then I felt like calling him Eddie which was a tremendous creation as was all of Bottom which he wrote all the best parts of) made his way to the pub.
And that was how I befriended Little Ben-Elton. We swapped comedy ideas while I was taking him to Casualty past a burning pub—The George and Whippet which burnt (look it up in any local newspaper of the time) down on December 3rd 1977 and Adrian had nothing to do with it.
I actually went back to Manchester a few years later and performed in a play called Man Equals Man by Berthold Brecht who is probably the worst playwriter who has ever been allowed near a type-righter. No one even knew he was a German until I “let it out of the bag”, and the play has never been performed since. I managed to expose how bad his play was. I realised it for the audience. It was a definitive performance. Up until then, everyone had enjoyed his plays, but during that run, I managed to alienate the audience so much that by the end of some of the performances there was no one left in the theatre. Even some of the cast had left by the time I had delivered all of my five lines. Beat that Paul Bradley.
The Man Booker Foundation
Equity House
Irthlingborough Road
Wellingborough NN8 1LT
February 15th 2005
Dear The Man,
Re (means regarding) your Booker Prize thing
The Rik Mayall here—yes that’s right—Rik Fucking Mayall in your letter, in your hands. Read it and weep. Well, not weep really, more like, rush around the office with tears of joy streaming down your face shouting about me. All right, that’s enough, let’s be sensible.
Now the thing is, I’m writing a book. Yes, go back and read that line again. You don’t need to bother with the “now the thing is,” bit. That’s not important. Just the bit about writing the book. That’s the meat of it. Which means that that is the important bit. The bit about writing the book. Anyway, just concentrate and we’ll move on.
I am writing a book. I’m just taking a brake from it to write you a letter to tell you about it because it’s kind of important that people like you are aware of what is going on in the white hot raging furnace of bang-up-to-date Eng Lit. Now some bloke that I met the other day at the market on the end of our road told me that your prize is the really top prize to win if you’ve written a book. So, already you’re probably beginning to get a sense of what kind of shit I’m going to throw down for you. This is media speak for what ideas I’m going to tell you about. It has nothing to do with fouling the carpet.
I’d only gone down for a few vegetables. I could have said I’d gone for a leak but that’s just a really unfunny play on words that one of those oldtime comedians might have come out with in a northern working class working men’s club in the mid-seventies and been thanked for it. (Although I’m down with the working classes—which means I like them and empathighs with them—I’ve always been a socialist.) Besides, they might not have had any. Anyway, this guy came up to me and we got to talking, you know, like “Hello, are you Rik Mayall?” “Yes.” “Oh Crikey, I’m a really big fan, I think you’re probably the best acter working in Britain or indeed any English speaking country etc.” And I told him about my edge cutting new book. And that’s when he said that I should try and win your prize because it helps to sell lots more copies.
So, here I am. And let me tell you that the book I’m writing is shaping up to be a total cock-ripper (which means it will be very amusing and interesting in every respec)
. So what I want to suggest is that if we agree that I can have the prize here and now then I’ll split the prize money with you. I know it’s only fifty grand and I get that for taking a piss in a commercial voice-over studio toilets as a rule but it’s the kudos that I’m looking for as much as anything else. And it will be a win win situation for you because once you’ve decided to give the prize to me, you won’t have to read all the other pretentious nob-dribble that gets sent to you. Everyone’s happy—we’re all floating around on big inflatable lilo things in sun-drenched swimming pools with fabulous topless birds fighting over which one of them is going to blow us off first. I’m speaking hypo-allegorically of course.
So, please let me know when the ceremony is and I’ll make sure that my agent, Heimi Fingelstein (you never read that), can get it in my diary and I can think about my acceptance speech. Let me know if you would like a mench (this is showbusiness for mention) and if I should give a mench (see last set of brackets) to any other products you might want me to plug. I can also do this on any daytime chat show you like—or onstage at the Olivier. I see that your company is something to do with food so perhaps I could let people know if you’ve got any special offers on at the moment—frozen peas half price—that sort of thing.
So there we go. Letter written. Job done. Please get back to me soon.
