Bigger than Hitler - Better than Christ

by Rik Mayall

  “Thanks baby,” I exhaled, “I’m going one way only, but I’m going all the way – if you get my meaning.” Her nipples hardened under the gentle caress of my manly drawl.

  “Blimey, The Rik Mayall, you’ve got me all aroused now. I’m so horned up I could almost slip off this chair.”

  “Don’t do that baby, you might hurt yourself on this not very thick shag (ooer obviously) pile carpet.”

  “Okay then The Rik Mayall, I won’t.”

  “Right you are.”

  “It was two for Peru, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Okay, bear with me, whilst I look it up on the computer.”

  “Okay thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “All right, I won’t.”

  “Great.”

  “Are you going anywhere nice on your holidays this year?”

  “Thought I might go to Portugal at the end of August for a couple of weeks.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “The weather in London has been relatively changeable recently, hasn’t it?

  “Yes it has but that’s London for you, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Where we live.”

  “Oh right, yeah.”

  “Anyway, here are your tickets.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Great to meet you, Rik Mayall, it’s been an amazing experience for me.”

  “Good, I’m glad.”

  “Thanks very much – may I call you Rik?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks then Rik.”

  “No thank you.”

  “Bye then.”

  “Bye.”

  BLAM! I was straight onto the plane in a raging blizzard of in flight movies, headphones, blankets, sachets of things, wet wipes, air hostesses (yes), pilots (no), trolleys, tiny toilets, no fucking smoking and deep vain thrombosis.

  The plane landed in a raging gravel storm and skad to a halt at the end of the runway. Peru. I had arrived. (In Peru.) Like a firestorm obviously. BANG! I was into a taxi and heading straight into the centre of the big town in Peru which is called Lima. It’s spelt like that as well because I’ve looked it up. And the first thing I did when I got there was hire the services of a Peruvian bird for my forty days and forty nights in the wilderness (she was not – I repeat not – a prostitute) and in the beat of an exotic blue and pink butterfly’s wing, we were in our strange magical vine-laden tree-top log cabin deep in the Peruvian rain forest (it was a total shit hole actually and nothing like what it said it would be like in the brochure I saw in Macclesfield. But that’s another story (which I can let you have if you give me some money. Get in touch with me via Heimi’s office if you want to make an offer. He might deny all knowledge of me and will probably deny that he knows anyone called Heimi Fingelstein but hang on in there, that’s just his way.))

  And so it was that I sat in my writing nest high up in the jungle treetops beneath the great over-arching azure sky as it stretched away to the horizon. And I started to write, and as I did so, became locked in a psychic orgy of intellectual concepts and great ideas which poured out of my brain and into my typing finger which tapped away like something very fast on cocaine (which I have never taken and never heard of). All I needed now was something to write about. I looked out over the steaming wilderness of jungle whilst the Peruvian bird did some dusting (and that’s not a euphemism for anything disgusting). What wondrous words and new philosophies would spill from my lips – well, not really my lips, it’s more like they would pour down my arms from my brain and into my hands so I could type them, but you get the idea. I sat there and pondered. When suddenly…

  “Hello!” It was Russell Grant.

  “Russell? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Oh don’t mind me, I’m just passing through on my way to Chapter 17. Love your work, Rik.”

  “Love yours too, Russell, now hurry up and get out of my moving bit.”

  “I’m nowhere near it…oh I see. Bye Rik.”

  “Bye Russell. Still loving your work.”

  With that he was gone. It was a sign. So I sat there and pondered some more. And then it came to me, and it was big, so I braced myself (which is not as easy as it sounds) and there was a rumbling from deep within my soul and suddenly I started to disgorge avalanches of hot take-it-to-the-bridge literary Semtex.

  I think everyone knows me well enough now to realise that I am a white hot triple-barrelled hell-trousered dirty-bottomed anarchist riding bareback on one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse’s horses which I personally nicked, jumping over the gates of dawn like Shergar at the Grand National* (before he died obviously) and everyone knows that I don’t tell lies. They call me Rik doesn’t-tell-lies Mayall and that’s why you know it’s the truth when I tell you that I wrote one of the finest novals ever known to man when I was in Peru. It had everything, romance, history, comedy, long words. It was a damned sight better than 99.99999 per cent recurring of all the other books out there†. But wait for it, here’s the heartbreak viewer, all that remains of my manuscript is a few tattered and afraid pages. It’s true, that’s all, and they are but a can of peas of what remains from the towering groceries (all well before their sell-by dates) piled floor-to-ceiling‡ of what once was a full length work of staggering artistry and literateur. You know that Isabel Alendy (we’re the only two biggies at Colin Harper’s), well I reckon if my lost noval met “House of the Spirits” in a pub fight before a Saxon reunion gig round the back of the Birmingham Hippodrome, “The Bleak Weeping Moorlands” would have nailed the fucker* before breakfast. I write hard. And here it is –

  ONLY SURVIVING PAGES FROM THE SECOND

  GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN*

  THE BLEAK WEEPING MOORLANDS

  by

  The Rik Mayall

  Chapter One

  And. So it was that the rain lashed moodily across the dark moorland. Why was nature so furious? Why did the green land seem so wet when the rain came down on it so from the bruised firmament? Because it was wet, that’s why. That’s the way that it was with rain. The Yorkshire rain. But why should the Yorkshire rain be here lashing down in Lancashire? Was there something a foot? The horse drawn carriage thundered on through the lightning. In the back, Lord Black knew his purpose. A young tender virgin swaddled in her shawl of linen and lace looked through the rain-lashed pane on the seat opposite. The tear on her face was as if a raindrop had somehow opened the window, got through it, closed the window again, drifted sideways and then noiselessly plopped onto her cheek just below her eye where tears usually go.

  Lord Black—whose friends called him Alistair—leaned forward in his seat and put his hand on the young tender virgin’s knee.

  “Do you come here often?” he intoned through his cheek whiskas so typical of those days.

  “Oh Lord Black, for I just happen to know your name and who you are already, how did you know that this was the very question that I was dreading someone would ask?”

  “There are many things I know in these parts of old Englande of Viotorian times just before the Crimean War is about to break out. Why don’t you come and stay the night with me at Black Castle Towers, my bleak moorland estate where even the walls seem to cry “Why, why all the hopelessness?” and where crows circle my bell-tower cawing noiselessly.”

  “But sir, I barely know your name and how knowest thou that I am a runaway virgin pretending I have somewhere to go?” she breathed through her heart-shaped lips.

  “Never mind that now, just tell me your name, young woman.”

  “Why sir, I am Felicity Pinquor-Browne.”

  “In that case, Miss Pinquor-Browne, you’re coming with me. Pull over driver!”

  “No, I’m all right,” said the driver. “I’ve got a coat.”

  “Yorkshire wit,” Lord Bla
ck sighed. “Pull over by the first bleak forbidding moorland estate on the right after this tree.”

  The driver pulled the horses under his command. The carriage buckled and swayed, the wooden wheels skidded and the horses hooves all combined to make a not undramatio display in the snow-drenched dark. Felicity Pinquor-Browne flew as if she was flying across the interior of the carriage into Lord Black’s arms and a shriek of August fear enveloped her heaving jugs.

  “Felicity Pinquor-Browne?”

  “Yes Lord Black.”

  “Here we are.”

  “Oh, very well then.” And with that, he scooped her up in his firm muscularly erotic English arms and strod through the heather and the hillsides up his drive, past the garage, through the porch and into the house. There he was met by an elderly woman.

  “Ah Mrs Hingsting,” said Lord Black putting Miss Pinquor-Browne down on the timeless marble flooring. “I need felching.”

  Mrs Ringsting hurried away yelling, “Felching, felching, his lordship wants felching.”

  A deep voice issued fourth from the top of the stares: “Yes m’lord.”

  “Ah Felohing,” said Lord Black. “Miss Pinquor-Browne is my guest. She will need a bedroom for the early part of the evening before my mood sets in and crows circle my belltower and the wind rages all around in the timeless moonlit English countryside. So, I want you to take her upstairs and give her one.”

  “Pinquor-Browne?”

  “It’s up to her.”

  “No, I was enquiring if that was her name.”

  “Oh right,” said Lord Black. “Yes, that’s her name.”

  “Right you are then,” said Felohing.

  “Thanks very much.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Dreams of pure unrequited love are

  NOVAL EXTRACT ENDS*

  FAX MESSAGE

  To: Doctor Wagner

  Healing Hands Health Centre

  Harley St, London W1

  From: The Rik Mayall

  Light Entertainment Firestorm

  Peru

  Date: 14th June 2000

  Dear Doctor Wagner,

  Love your verk. Picture der scene – oh fuck this, I’m going to write in English. You’re walking through Spain in the sixteenth century. It’s a sunny day – maybe it’s a Tuesday afternoon and you’ve been really working hard and you’re finished for the day and you’re on your way home to where you live. Suddenly, from nowhere, a load of really hard blokes from the Inquisition come riding up (on horses) and attach one of those torture implements to your arse to check your faith in God. Well, think of that sort of pain Doctor W – get it locked tight in your mind and then times it by about two thousand and you’ll get an idea of what I’m feeling at the moment. All I can do is type. It feels like a rabid flesh-eating rodent is having dinner where the sun don’t shine although actually it does shine there at the moment due to the hole in the roof of my hut and a smaller corresponding hole in my trousers.

  So here is the point of what I’m writing, which I do a lot of and so I’m fucking good at it, so clench your teeth and concentrate. This is a white knuckle letter Doctor Wagner, so read on (which you probably are anyway so ignore the last bit – though if you aren’t then don’t (except if you have (which if you have then start the letter again.))) Okay? Although whether okay or not, just do it. Okay?

  When I visited you last week, you gave me inoculation jabs for all the major jungle illnesses which you thought I might contract on my journey. You might as well have injected me with a syringe-full of piss for all the good it’s done me. What do I find when I arrive here after my three day riverboat journey, but not only am I riddled with malaria but I’ve got an attack of diahorrea which could break world records I’m absolutely fucking sure. Seriously, you could send that Roy Castle up here with Norris Magwurter and I bet you anything I’d be a record breaker once they’d seen the titanic geyser of liquid arse that is spraying non-stop out of what’s left of my bum crack ring. That’s why I’m doing my typing upside down. No sooner have I managed to drink a glass of water than it is either sweated or shat out of me before it can even touch the sides. I’m as sick as a pike and at this rate I’ll be down to about four stone by the end of the week. Even the worms that appear from time to time out of my nostrils and from behind my eyeballs are beginning to look emaciated. I’m so weak that I don’t have the strength to make it to the nearest native settlement for provisions which means that my Girl Friday, Pi, has eaten nothing other than my semen for the past week. Mind you, she looks pretty good on it.

  Anyway, you fucking so called doctor, please forward medical advice and supplies as soon as you can (i.e. before I’m dead). I refuse to be beaten like this. Like I’ve always said, “No compromise, no surrender, no sell out, no anti-biotics, no bog paper, no Anusalve, no friends, no auditions without a guarantee of a part and/or shag with co-star (female don’t forget)…” Oh fuck it, I’ve gotta go again. It feels as though I’m about to give birth to my own liver. You may not even receive this letter as I think I might have to wipe my arse on it.

  I am not – repeat not – no, forget that, there’s no time to write “repeat not” – let’s get on with it, this is a showbusiness emergency – no scrap that, a major showbusiness emergency – no scrap that again, it’s a light entertainment holocaust. Where was I? Oh yeah, and I’m not a happy fucking bunny or whatever that expression is that the ordinaries use that makes me want to kill them in their sleep. You’ve got to DO SOMETHING! Tell all the medical companies that I’ll do free voice-overs for them for the next twelve months. Whatever it takes, just send me some drugs! Do it quickly, I can’t stand on my head for much longer.

  Remember that time I came to see you with my hives and we got to talking about all those Eastern European women who you’ve been harvesting? Well get this, I was wearing a wire that day and I’ve still got the tape. I think we understand each other.

  Nearly dead and not very bloody happy about it,

  Rik Mayall (The)

  Some shit-hole-literally in Peru.

  THE PINNACLE OF LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

  Some things are just not meant to be funny and business is one of them. Business is a serious business. So, if you’re looking for amusing anecdotes and gentle showbusiness reminiscences then you’re in the wrong business. And the wrong chapter. Let’s face it, if that’s what you’re looking for, you’re in the wrong book. In fact, fucking hell, you’re probably in the wrong life. I know some pretty heavy duty people on both sides of the life/afterlife divide so if you want to be terminated then let me know. I can probably have it arranged. No, forget probably. I’m Rik Mayall, I can do anything. The fact of the matter is, that when I do one of my great showbusiness voice-overs, it might be funny as hell to the people who watch the advertisement or listen to it on the radio but us serious guys in the advertising business with our button-down collars and economical haircuts aren’t laughing at all. That’s because we’re too busy exchanging marketing expressions like branding*, brainstorming, penetrations†, demographics, strategies and others that I know really well and am so using all the time. We stand toe to toe, unless we’re sitting around a glass-topped boardroom table in Soho at a top advertising agency which often happens, and we’re looking each other right in the eyes and saying, “Hi guy, let’s do it, let’s press the button, let’s touch each other’s bases on this,” and lots of other cool expressions like that. We don’t pussy feet around the advertising dance floor, we just get our cutting edge ideas out of our ideas sachet and roll around with them a bit, maybe pin them down and ask them who the daddy is. And if they don’t shout, “money” at us then we’ll know we’re smelling shit. And no one in the frontline of product placement wants to have the smell of shit up their nose. That is definitely not screaming “happening!” in anyone’s face. In fact, it’s screaming “not happening!” through a megaphone IN EVERYONE’S FACE. So, walk out of the room, close the door, leave the house, sell it and walk away
, marry someone else, join the Catholic church, have lots of children and sit down in a big red chair thinking, “I don’t know what happened there but I know that it was the right thing to do.”

  Anyway, what I’m saying to you is that I am deeply in bed beneath the covers with international high finance and business and the advertising industry generally. I bloody nearly did a business studies “O” level, guy, sorry, viewer – no, this is advertising, sorry – mate. That’s it, mate. But that’s not important. What is important is that I’ve done some fabulous stuff in my time, just look at it viewer, smell it, feel it shudder through the earth like some big and happening thing on the Ricta scale. And given the choice between working on an international blockbuster smash hit movie like Oh Marbella!, Day of the Sirens or The Canterville Ghost, I would take a commercial voice-over any day. There’s no competition. And that’s because I am Doctor Voice-over. I mean, if you were to go into Soho right now and go into one of those private members’ clubs where me and the ad guys hang out after we’ve wrestled with a few ideas and said, “Hey, great mate ad exec types, who is Doctor Voice-over?” they’ll look at you like you’re a spaz and won’t even bother replying to you because the answer is so obvious*.

  The reason that I’m in such demand for my commercial voice-over skills is that I have a voice and demeanour that says, “Hi, how you doing?” – friendly, relaxed, – “Wanna drink? I’m having one so you might as well. Here you go. Anyway, I hear you’re thinking of buying yourself a [whatever the product happens to be] well, I happen to know a lot about [whatever the product is] and I recommend you buy this brand of [whatever it is] because I’m an honest guy – I have no axe to grind – and I would never lie to you so you can trust me like your own, you know, whatever you trust or something.” You know what I’m saying. Get on with it. And that’s why all the products that I advertise are market leaders. I mean, think about it for a moment, will you? I am the Andrex Puppy. That’s right, I mean I know you knew it anyway but fucking hell. I’m the fucking Andrex fucking puppy for fucking God’s sake. Get that? Got that? Rik Mayall is the Andrex puppy? Fuck yeah. Eat it and weep, Mr Pastry. I single-handedly caused a global arse-wiping rethink. And, what’s more, my breath-taking performances in those commercials have single-handedly led to the startling and almost shocking statistic that since they went on air, thirty-five per cent – yes, thirty-five per cent – less kids throughout the UK are attending school because so many of them are staying at home to watch me on the television. What’s that say to you, viewer? Yeah, me too. Do you know, they have even had to cancel some of the Andrex adverts because they can’t make the toilet paper fast enough. That’s true as well. You can ask anyone. Well, anyone who works at Andrex anyway. I’ll give you their phone numbers if you want. Yes I will. Well I would, but they might not like it very much and get a bit cross with me, but that’s so not going to happen because me and the Andrex guys are close. We’re like that (I did a hand gesture just then – a cool one. Don’t worry about it. No sweat. I gave it a bit of a wipe first.) That’s just like the way I am with all the companies that I do ads for. I mean, even as we speak a massive inter-continental Rik Mayall deal is going down. Yes it is. And get this. And get it properly full in the face with happening aftershave on it – I signed that contract literally moments ago! Oh yes I did! And you viewer, yes you, are the first person on the planet to witness this astonishing cataclysmic culture shifting fact. You are listening to the voice – I mean listening to the words of – I mean reading the words typed by the finger of – the man – I mean, THE man, fuck! – the MAN, that’s better – the MAN who is the Toilet Duck voice. That’s right, the fucking Toilet Duck voice. Experience it now viewer. Yes, I am the Andrex voice, yes I am the Anusalve voice, yes I am the Toilet Duck voice. That’s the big three that have just landed as I’m writing this, the hottest chapter in any book ever written. It’s got to mean something hasn’t it. Everything means something. I’m The Rik Mayall and in advertising, I’m the man who works with arseholes. It’s just the way it is. You read it here first. Ciao.