Rik Mayall

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Alexei Sayle on Rik Mayall

He's the late, great king of anarchic comedy, but Rik Mayall was also charmingly narcissistic. At least according to his co-star on The Young Ones, Alexei Sayle. "One thing Rik liked to do was he'd bring you back to his flat and make you watch tapes of Rik Mayall."

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Working with Rik Mayall, by Kevin Armento

One of Rik Mayall's very last projects was to play a modern version of Fagin. In the months leading up to his sudden death on June 9, 2014 Mayall had been collaborating on a script with American writer Kevin Armento and Carlos Davis, writer/producer of Mayall's 1991 movie Drop Dead Fred. In the piece below Armento recalls the thrill of working with Mayall. Although he did not know Mayall's British TV work when he first met him, he soon realised that he was in the presence of a comic genius. Immediately after Mayall's death Armento wrote Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally inspired by their work together. The play is being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe this August. The comedy is physical, the dialogue delivered at breakneck speed. Sounds like classic Mayall.

Ade Edmondson still misses Rik Mayall 'every day'

Ade Edmondson has spoken of his heartache at former comedy partner Rik Mayall's death, saying he still "misses him every day".

My favourite photograph by Alexei Sayle

Stand-up star and writer Alexei, 63, recalls carefree days and calamities with The Young Ones' Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall.

A rerun of Rik and Ade's 2003 live Bottom touring show. They were able to be considerably muckier on stage than they ever were on the TV, so gird yourself appropriately for some turbo-charged toilet humour, riotous flatulence and invasive amateur medical procedures. Ade's Eddie Hitler invents a lager that puts the user into a coma, while Richie inherits a trunk from his uncle. The plot is thin, the violence thick and unctuous.