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"Modern Comedy Is
Crap…."
Adrian Edmondson is a far cry from his brash, loud
characters Eddie or Vyvyan, being softly spoken, and almost shy.
Adrian Edmondson is one of Britain's leading comic actors, best known for his roles in The
Young Ones, Bottom, and The Comic Strip Presents. He was born 39 years ago in Bradford,
and met his comic partner, Rick Mayall, at Manchester University. They moved to London in
1979, where they joined the nascent band of alternative comedians performing at the Comedy
Store. Soon afterwards, Edmondson and Mayall found fame in The Young Ones. Edmondson also
wrote and directed a number of Comic Strip films. In 1983, he announced that he never
wanted to work live again, and for eighteen months he made music videos. Since returning
to performance, his roles have been diverse: he appeared in the West End in The Rocky
Horror Show and Waiting for Godot, and played straight roles in such dramas as If You See
God, Tell Him. The most enduring, however, has been his TV and stage work with Rick Mayall
in Bottom, in which he plays sleazy and insane Eddie Hitler.
Edmondson's first novel, The Gobbler, is the story of a drunken, unfaithful comedian named
Julian, which, he is at pains to point out, is not autobiographical. "No - it'd be
stupid if it was. My wife would divorce me if it was. Well, it's ingenuous to say it's not
as well, because I don't think that anyone can create things that aren't of them, or about
them, or things they've thought of - even if they haven't done them or experienced them.
So, in a kind of Walter Mitty way it is autobiographical. I think there's a kind of, or a
bit of Julian Mann in most people - or most men that I know. But we all kind of balance a
kind of primitive desire with a kind of emotional and intellectual desire, and in some
people it's harder to balance than others. We all have it, and it's something that's quite
rightly been repressed - otherwise we'd all go about fucking in fields, we'd all be
animals. We're not animals, but it's part of human nature, and what Julian is."
Edmondson feels that he always does the same character in his comedy roles
because "the relationship between Rick and I is always the same in everything we do -
he's a vain kind of aspiring, kind of emotionally confused person, and I'm a violent but
strangely logical person. It's just that kind of relationship that makes the things we do
work. We occasionally give them different names, and the series different titles, but the
song's the same."
His decision to make pop videos for the likes of The Pogues, 10,000 Maniacs and Sandy Shaw
was a long way removed from his own heavy metal parody, Bad News, but one that he found
"good fun, actually. I did that because I had to give up art at school when I was
stupidly young - thirteen I think. I've always had a kind of visual eye, and it was a
pleasant exercise for that. They were quite surreal, and heavily art directed."
For over twenty years, Rick Myall and Adrian Edmondson have been working together.
Edmondson feels that working with Mayall is "like working with my mirror image,
really. People expect us to be different, but we're not. We're very similar people, and
it's because we're so similar and close to each other that we make each other laugh - in
fact we make each other laugh more than we make anyone else laugh. If it ever falls apart
- which I'm sure it will do some day, because everyone gets unpopular - we could still
make each other laugh. That's what we do. When we write Bottom, we sit in the pub and talk
philosophy for two hours, and kind of worry about why we're here, and then write
hysterical fart gags to kind of overcome it. I'm sure one forms the other, or rubs off on
the other."
The central character in The Gobbler is Julian Man - the "Funniest Mann Alive" -
a drunken comedian on the down slope of his career, who has much in common with Bottom's
Eddie Hitler, and The Young One's Vyvyan Basterd. Edmondson sees Julian as "a kind of
sublimation of them. I don't claim that our TV comedies are highbrow in anyway, but I
think there's a basis to them, and that's why they're more popular than other TV comedies.
There's a basis of truth in them, a gut feeling. There are a lot of sitcoms written - I'm
sure you have them here - where someone writes the, someone makes them, someone casts
them, and they have no bollocks at all. That kind of singer/songwriter school of script
writing, and you have to put something of real life in them, and that's why I think
there's a continuation between the others, and the character in the book."
Adrian Edmondson is married to Jennifer Saunders, of Absolutely Fabulous fame, but they
don't often collaborate with each other. "We don't really cross much, because most
writers have a crisis of confidence. It's hard to show anything until it's finished,
although she's more confident than I, and shows me more stuff than I show her of mine. So
I comment more on hers, but we work quite separately."
"Even though we work in the same field, we have an intense private life away from our
professional lives. We don't see ourselves as a "professional couple" in the
same way that most people must. I'm sure they can't help it - to most people we're just
two comedians who happened to once worked together, now live together, but happen to have
separate professional lives. So it's difficult for them to see how we could separate our
professional lives from our personal lives, but we do. Not kind of self-consciously, but
we do. It's just a life."
He's the first to admit that not much makes him laugh. "The most fun I ever have is
sitting in with Rick writing, and we laugh at our own jokes. I like the Roadrunner
cartoons, and I'm a huge fan of Eric Morecombe, Tommy Cooper, Laurel & Hardy, and
Buster Keaton. Nothing much that's modern or current, 'cause there aren't a lot of funny
comedians. Most modern comedy is crap."
Adrian Edmondson's ideal life, if he was to give up comedy and writing, would be to take
up carpentry, "because I do it, and I like it. There are all these things you can do
in your life, and I love knocking about. It gives me time to think, when I'm taping away -
and I'm quite good at it. I'm waiting for the time when I fail - because we all fail - and
I'm ready, I'll take up carpentry."
The Gobbler is published by Heinemann, and is currently available at all good book stores.
Special thanks must go to Gabrielle Cummins of Reed Books, Jodie Davis, and the Adelaide
Hilton.