Hard News: The People's Poet is dead!
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This popped up in my Twitter stream - a couple of funny bastards who fire off each other and really know how to work an audience.
(The description says "Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson momentarily break character" but it's more than five minutes.)
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Lyndon Hood, in reply to
That Times front page:
ALL SCHOOLS MUST TEACH WHAT IT IS TO BE BRITISH [photo of Rik]
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Mid '85, it was first shown here. VERY late at night, so as not to upset people.
It became a ritual, at a Very Large Flat I was in, to go to the pitchers on Friday night, come home, let off some fireworks (a flatmate was a dangerous goods inspector at the Dept of Labour & he could get all these free, banned fireworks, at any time) and then watch the Young Ones.
'Hands Up Who Likes Me!' [EVERYONE POINTS TO THE FLOOR] and 'Well that's no reason to hassle me when I'm on the toilet' and [when interviewing prospective flatmates] 'YES WE'VE GOT A VIDEO' became catchphrases.
I think this was my favourite one.... It has lasted not too foully.
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Back in the late 70s my then partner was on the same drama school course as Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. It was my pleasant duty to attend every performance of their (then) only routine, the infamous Two Americans sketch. Time passed, the audiences got into double figures and one day we wound up in this dingy, strip club in Soho, part of the Paul Redmond empire, called the Comic Strip. Prior to Dawn and Jenny being added, the line up was dominated by Alexi Sayle and two comedy duos, The Outer Limits (Nigel Planer and the much underrated Pete Richardson) and 20th Century Coyote (Ade Edmondson and Rik). Brought up during the anarchic British TV comedy period of Spike Milligan, Marty Feldman and the Monty Python bunch I thought I’d seen everything. But for the sheer terrifyingly uncertain nerve wracking performance that was Rik Mayall I’d never imagined the like. If it had come down to a choice between the survival of Rik, the audience or the building I’m not sure I’d have trusted Rik’s judgment. I disliked The Young Ones intensely, because I felt that genius had been sacrificed on the alter of shock. But I’m genuinely pleased that my opinion was in the minority.
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Ade's tribute.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
This popped up in my Twitter stream – a couple of funny bastards who fire off each other and really know how to work an audience.
Isn't that wonderful? The audience is in tears*.
*In a good way. -
Hebe,
Alan B’stard captured the Thatcher Tories so painfully well.
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The Young Ones was like Sunday School in our house. We re-watched it every weekend. And I love all the Comic Strip Presents shows so much. Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, Bad News Tour etc.
More Bad News never gets tired.
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Nick Russell, in reply to
Someone, somewhere ought to do a cover version of "I want to drink till I die"...
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Impromptu, wordless, rude and yet....
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Bevan Shortridge, in reply to
(could only find this on myspace, oddly).
Found it on Youtube Bad News – Warriors of Genghis Khan
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Don't forget, Kevin's ear!
And "What are you, Theatre?" -
an affectionate tribute from the recent Harry (Enfield) & Paul (Whitehouse) 50 years of BBC2 sketch show. Sums up the Mike factor too.
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Mr Mark, in reply to
At 3:16 - 3:17 Vicar (Terry Jones) says "Ahhhh, fucken hell !!!"
And then Rik replies "Fuck, it's a bit early for that, isn't it ???"When that episode was first broadcast here in 85, the censors (inadvertently ?) left the fucks in and I'm pretty sure that was the first time I'd ever heard fuck broadcast on New Zealand television.
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Feel compelled to say something. I was just going into my teenage years when I started watching The Young Ones on the fervent recommendation of my cousin who had seen it in England. I didn't understand all of the jokes at first, being that age, although my father, who is English, was able to help me, and was quite amused with me asking questions like "Dad, who is Norman Tebbit?". I used to get terribly upset when the VCR didn't record when it was supposed to. It felt important and special to me, and I still know large bits of various Young Ones episodes by heart. I watched everything he did after that and Dad and I used to laugh together watching The New Statesman.
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Tamara, in reply to
My older brother had that book and I loved it to bits. I wish I knew where it was now!
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Sacha, in reply to
community viewing
this, most of all.
genius. -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Ade’s tribute.
snap!
;- ) -
My Friday night ritual in 1986 was to walk from my hovel in Commercial Road via the Connon's Bakery for a six-pack of cream doughnuts, to my friends' flat in Third Ave, 'cos they had a TV, just to watch the Young Ones. We were so delighted to see something so irreverent on TV. Monty-Pythonesque for sure.
Showed my kids a few episodes recently, and it's not as good as when viewed through my rose-tinted glasses to the mid-80's, but still hilariously funny in places.
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Julian Melville, in reply to
In fact, I think the first most New Zealanders saw of it was when the second series of The Young Ones won a Bafta in 84 or 85 (and they showed the scene of Vyvian kicking his head along the railway tracks on the way to University Challenge).
Yup, that's exactly my memory of it. I saw that clip on the news when I was about 14, then my dad went off his nut about how terrible it was and it was an instant favourite before I'd even seen the show!
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The soliloquy that gave this post its title.
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I was in my mid-teens when The Young Ones first screened in NZ in '85. It became a weekly ritual for my friends and I to go into town on Friday evenings, get someone to buy us under-agers a flagon of beer, then go around to someone's place to watch The Young Ones, which screened at 11 or 11.30pm.
Then on Saturday we'd go around to someone else's place watch a video-recording of it, because, well, just by chance someone's parents actually had such a pricey commodity.
Come school on Monday we'd end up talking our way through it, picking the best pieces out, etc.
It really, really was perfect for people our age.
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remind me how we embed video again? Just the URL format doesn't seem to work. (Should it be in the mini-help below?)
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Sacha, in reply to
you need to include the http at the front of the full url (not shortened)
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