Bigger than Hitler – Better than Christ. Rik Mayall

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СКАЧАТЬ href="#ulink_d2e8613b-384f-5b34-9564-e8037d9dfa16">CRACKING THE SMOKE ^*

      Imagine the scene, and if you can’t then bollocks, I’m just going to keep my legs together on this one and go for it. 1980. That was the big year last century. Because that’s when me and Adrian Edmondson came down and hit London. Only it wasn’t 1980, it was 1979 but that’s not important. What’s important is what year it was. And it was that year. No question. BLAM! No, sorry, hold on a moment.

      BLAM! That’s better. We had just done a fantastic show in Edinburgh called Death on the Toilet. It had got everything in it: violence, and lavatory jokes. It was a massive hit. We made such a profit, actually, no, we didn’t. If you’re a tax inspector, you never read that, and if you did, it was a joke. And with the profit—not that we made any—we came down to London to stage a spectacular theatrical touring show. Which we did, and it was called King Ron And His Nubile Daughter. It had sex in it. Well, nubile sounds quite sexy. And we thought that Ron was quite a funny word. The whole thing was a disaster. We played twelve different venues, put up the poster ourselves, several times (and it was quite well drawn) and all in all we attracted an audience of eight people. That’s true that. An audience of eight spread over a tour of twelve venues. Not bad. Actually, it was worse than that. It was a total and complete abortion. But God was looking down on me and thinking, “That guy’s good. I want him on the telly, and I want him on the stage, and on the cinema. I want him to be a name. He’s really got what it takes. And I should know because I’m God. I made him myself. That’s Rik Mayall and I’ll keep my eye on him.”

      So, because he liked the look of me and had big plans for me, God sent a reviewer from the Times to see us one day at the Tramshed, a kind of little theatre bar thing in Woolwich, South London. There were only three people in the audience, well two and a half actually, because one of them was a baby in a pram with its mother who was only there because it was raining outside. But at the back of the auditorium there was this weird dark presence. I came on stage and soon, everyone was howling. And the next thing is that I’m being called a “very talented young maniac” in the Times. The newspaper! Me, in the paper! Fucking hell! That’s it, I thought, I’ve arrived. Look out everybody. Lock up your daughters and hide your drugs (not that I would be looking for them because I never touch them).

      “Seen that, Ade?” I said and showed him my review.

      I think it was about a week before the bruising went down on my face.

      Luckily, a lot of English students had come to London to try and get into publishing—like twats do—and a lot of English students are girls. So I had a lot of places to stay. I might have been homeless but I wasn’t twadgeless. I ended up in Clapham with some girl whose name I can’t remember. But I remember her boyfriend was called Richard. He was a nice guy. Used to work all day in an office which was fantastic for me and his girlfriend. One Friday night he came home from work, completely pissed as is obligatory if you work in the city, and he told me he had heard of a great new place that had opened in London and it was called The Comedy Store. That was the original one, viewer. It was good too. It wasn’t like one of those shitholes they have now that are full of non-entities trying to copy me.

      So, I went down there to this new Comedy Store place which was just a tiny doorway in the middle of nowhere. I stepped in and there was nothing apart from a sort of tiny cupboard with a lift in it. So I got in the little lift, went up, got out (like you do)—and get a load of this—it was a strip club. Fantastic I thought. And the bar was all made out of gold and all the birds were topless which means they were wandering around with their breasts all over the place^*. The drinks were terrifyingly expensive, about forty quid for half a can of warm lager, and I was the tallest guy in the place because all the other men were Japanese. But at 10 o’clock the strip club turned into The Comedy Store. All the Japanese businessmen suddenly disappeared and all the punky threatening dangerous young maverick outlaw comedians started coming in. I’d never seen anything like it: Keith Allen, Tony Allen, Pauline Melville, Maggie Steed, Jim Barclay, Alexei Sayle, Andy de la Tour, Arnold Brown (deep pulsating respect) and maybe ten or so others (sorry guys, blame my memory on the quadbike)—and let me also take this opportunity to pay my respects to Peter Rosengard—there’s nothing wrong with being Jewish—that’s what I always say. And to the great Don Ward. Men I owe a lot to. But not money.

      The rule was that if you were shit you were gonged off. I’m the only person who was never gonged off. That’s true. As well as being a cool thing to say. Everybody was raving about me because I was the best. The others were quite good but let’s face it, at the end of the day, they weren’t Rik Mayall. I can’t put it more kindly than that really.

      Then suddenly, from nowhere, in strode a canny independent-eyed West Country rebel called Pete “Peter” Richardson with his comedy partner Nigel “excuse me, where am I?” Planer. They were known as The Outer Limits. Now at the Comedy Store, if you didn’t get gonged, you’d earn a tenner for doing about fifteen minutes, but if you were a double act, you only earned fifteen pounds between you which meant that you got seven pounds fifty each. Well that’s what the other double acts got. Ade handled our cash and I got a quid. Nice of him. Clever guy. So, anyway, Pete decided we should work six nights a week instead of one so we could earn lots more money. So he went over the road to Paul Raymond’s Revue Bar and he put on a comedy club there which was called The Comic Strip. Because it was in a strip club. And we were comedians – allegedly. And he took Alexei Sayle, Nigel Planer, me and Ade, and the great Arnold Brown with him. And that was when a double act came to audition for us. They were called French and Saunders. They were so repulsive and unfunny that we gave them the job straight away and Dawn and Jennifer made me and Ade look stupendously funny. And that’s how it all happened. I was on a roll. From one night a week at the Comedy Store to six nights a week at the Comic Strip. The place was frocking. Flocking. Something. Well, whatever it was, it was doing it. Big style.

      Someone had asked me to audition (not that I do auditions) and when I went to it I found out it was for a sketch show called A Kick Up The Eighties with Miriam Margolyes, Tracey Ullman, Roger Sloman, Robbie Coltrane and Ron Bain. But when I went to see this guy called Colin Gilbert who was the producer, I didn’t realise that you were supposed to have prepared something to perform for them so they could see if you were any good. I thought, fuck! I’m in the shit! And I’m on in five minutes! What shall I do? Panic? No. Come on Rikki – you’ve got no dialogue DO – SOMETHING – so I did. God blew me a kiss and on the spot I invented a character who came from Redditch in the West Midlands, which is not far from where I come from, and could talk about anything at all – from a paper clip to another paper clip – and never stop – ever. (He’s still talking now.) His name was – yes, that’s right – Kevin Turvey and he became an overnight sensation. I was born. I took my name off the show’s credits as well which was a stroke of genius because everyone thought that Kevin actually existed. I’m so addicted to modesty it’s a curse sometimes. And that’s where I saw this stonking make-up bird called Barbara – fuck me what a lay – the best in Europe without a doubt. Anyway, don’t tell the wife.

      So you see my dear viewer, what me and my magnificent cohorts were doing was taking the comedy rulebook and tearing it up into little pieces, eating it, letting it pass through our bodies, picking it out of our brown stuff and burning it and dancing naked on the ashes. Smell the legend viewer, smell the legend. Sorry about that. You only get one life to wank yourself off in an autobiography.

      Suddenly, we were wanted on the telly and not just the telly, no, the big screen^* was beckoning. I offered Donald Sutherland a sandwich in Eye of the Needle, played draughts with Brian Glover^† in American Werewolf in London and performed in the breakthuogh Rocky Horror Picture Show sequel Shock Treatment with my great mate Barry Humphries and СКАЧАТЬ