Rik Mayall, Prince Of The Putrid, Dies At 56

British comedian, writer and actor Rik Mayall has died at the age of 56. His death leaves behind a wife and three children, and no suspicious circumstances are believed to be involved.

I first fell for Mayall’s comedy stylings as a young teenager with a keen interest in profanity. Naturally, Bottom floated my boat. As grotesque and idiotic as the show was, Mayall and co-star Adrian Edmondson were able to call upon a telepathic chemistry, and to imbue their characters with a sense of pathos in spite of their utter revoltingness. The below live video shows the chemistry, but not the pathos:

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Mayall was already a cult figure by the time of Bottom‘s 90s run, having made his start in stand-up comedy in the early 80s, before writing and starring in cult sitcom The Young Ones. At first glance, The Young Ones was an archetypal ‘deadshits in a sharehouse’ comedy, but it drew no small resonance from the times. Three of its main characters were a punk, a hippie, and a pretentious, Troskyite student. If it had featured a coal miner and an Argentinian, it would have completed the full set of Thatcherian bogeymen.

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Mayall’s workrate slowed down dramatically after a 1998 quad bike accident, which left him in a five-day coma, and from which he never fully recovered. He racked up a respectable list of voice-over credits, but was no longer able to do justice to his hyperactive, flouncing, frypan-swinging performance style . He left us with this, though, for which I’ll always be thankful.

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To be fair, maybe you had to be there. Maybe this?

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Vale, Rik.

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