The Life of Rik Mayall: A New Documentary

Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson had great success with the sitcom Bottom.

Rik Mayall was a unique comedian with a chaotic way of performing. He had a softer side behind his bravado. Rik was not straightforward to work or live with. He had an anarchic and alternative mind.

Rik's daughter Bonnie says: 'There was a joke in the house, it was like always on, never off.' Rik wasn't always 'on' with his family. But to others, he had to be funny. Bonnie explains that Rik had a dual personality.

Rosie Richardson adds: 'Anywhere there were people that knew who he was, he'd immediately just sort of stand taller, puff out his chest, really make a show of it, just be flirty and silly.'

Bonnie concludes: 'I think people would just assume that he's the most confident person in the world, and it kind of is a dichotomy, because he was, and he did believe he was amazing. But he was quite dual in the way that he would have that but also be very, very kind of worried about stuff.'

A new Sky documentary celebrates Rik's work and life. It highlights his drinking issues and a painful split from comedy pal Ade Edmondson. The documentary also talks about a quad bike accident that changed Rik's life.

Rik's daughter Rosie speaks about his life in the documentary.

After university, Rik and Ade began trying to write and perform comedy. They worked factory jobs and did just four gigs in their first year. Ade says: 'We enjoyed each other, we were best friends.'

In 1979, they went to Edinburgh Fringe and were a big hit. Ade says: 'I used to go to the ticket office and collect our tickets every day, and it was just that huge wads of cash.'

Rik Mayall on stage in the earlier days of his career.

Success continued with the opening of the Comedy Store in London. Rik gained a kind of cult status with his solo character Kevin Turvey. He worked as a duo with Ade under the name 20th Century Coyote.

Rik and Ben Elton would tour regularly. They teamed up for their next TV comedy project Filthy Rich & Catflap. Rik played Alan B'Stard, a Conservative politician in a widely acclaimed political satire The New Statesman.

By the start of the Nineties, Rik was working with Ade on Bottom, a BBC sitcom featuring comedy violence and loneliness of two flatmates. It was hugely popular on TV and as a live show.

Ade Edmondson looks back on his final years with Rik Mayall with emotion.

Ade says: 'Rik was brilliant. He was really good as that character. It’s the best programme we ever made together.'

Of their first live shows, Ade adds: 'It’s the most success we ever had. We would run off stage in our incredibly sweaty gear, run into the van and drink all the way home.'

But even as the tour grew more successful, trouble was just around the corner. Rik’s drinking was getting out of control.

Rik agreed to go teetotal for the second tour. But by the third run, he was secretly drinking.

Ade says: 'My little office was overlooking a pub, and then I'd start to see him going in for a quick couple of shorts before he came in to write.'

His daughter also recalls increasing problems with drink, leading to one horrific life event.

Rosie Richardson says: 'In 1998, Dad and I were traveling from London to Devon. He had a briefcase, and he went in his briefcase, and he got out loads of little miniatures; whiskey, gin, vodka.'

Rosie says: 'He just kept getting these little bottles out the bag. I said ‘What are you doing, darling?’ He said, ‘just don't tell your mother’.'

A life-changing moment took place when Rik suffered a quad bike accident in Devon. Rik’s voice in the programme is heard from an archive interview saying: 'I thought I'd go out for a ride on my new quad bike.'

'There were drops of rain on my arm, and I thought, ‘This isn't very safe, you go inside the house’, and off they went, and that's the last thing I remember.'

Rik flipped his bike, and the accident nearly killed him. Son Sid Mayall recalls: 'My dad was lying with the quad bike on him, so when I went round the corner, Mum and my aunt were taking the quad bike off of my dad at the time.'

There was a huge pool of blood around his head, it fractured his skull and was completely unconscious.

Lying in his hospital room, family and friends worried how he would come out of the other side. He came round to see Ben Elton sitting by his bedside.

Friends and family all agree that the accident changed Rik understandably. Rosie says: 'He was very very unwell. Nobody would ever know, he was the bravest man to deal with all of that.'

He wasn't dad for years after, he completely had to stop drinking, which was difficult in itself. He had epilepsy trauma and seizures which he would try to hide from people.

Rather than hit the road and tour again, Rik and Ade decided to make a movie instead called Guest House Paradiso.

Ade recalls: 'He was never exactly the same person. He was bizarrely more emotional.'

The pair did go back on the road again with Bottom but the relationship was not quite the same.

Ade says: 'I think endless touring did us in. I kind of realised we couldn't really do it anymore, and we never really got to an understanding about that, which makes me very sad.'

He told Rik on the last night of the fifth Bottom tour he wouldn’t be doing more, which left Rik in tears.

The impact was huge as Rik felt rejected. Rosie says: 'I remember Dad saying to me ‘I don't know what I've done wrong, I don't know why this has happened’.'

Rosie says: 'I just think that my dad deserved more, so much more. But then again, Adrian was completely entitled to do what he needed to do as well, for his own mental health.'

The pair did try to write together again in 2012, a Bottom follow up for the characters.

Ade says: 'It was something that grieved me in the way he died so suddenly, that we never kind of repaired what our relationship was.'

Ade says: 'I think we should mostly remember that he was a f**king genius.'

Rik Mayall: Magnificent B’stard will premiere on Sky Documentaries on June 25.

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