You took your time, you bastard.
When The Young Ones exploded onto our screens in 1982 its unique
brand of anarchic slapstick...
..potty-mouthed humour...
Get out of my head, poo hole.
And surrealist asides...
Oh, we're just the, er, fly-on-the-wall documentary film crew, OK, love?
..gave British comedy a great big kick up the arse.
Four horrible characters...
Do I smell? Yes.
..bitching and fighting...
I'm not a virgin! I am not a virgin!
..farting their way through life.
BREAKS WIND
Over the next two hours we'll be looking at how it redefined
the comedy rule book.
I only said I was a pacifist.
It's like they'd sort of come into the...
to the BBC like a bunch of vandals.
Safe studio sitcoms would never be the same again.
The BBC did comedy well, but this was something different, it was.
That I did not expect.
We were literally just going, "We're going to do a sitcom, but we're going to do it our way."
We'll also reveal, for the first time on British television,
some scenes from the cutting room floor we were never meant to see.
I did notice that it was mostly Adrian, wasn't it,
messing up, really?
And explore how The Young Ones comedy revolution still
reverberates today.
All right! Nobody move and nothing will happen!
We were the first of a new kind of comedy,
and so all the other performers have kind of followed on from us, really.
Sticks and stones may break my bones...
That is the first sensible thing you have said all day.
I don't think you could have helped
but be influenced by The Young Ones, it did just explode in such
a way, and every young person watched it and felt it was for them.
Look out! Cliff!
It just feels really exciting and a little bit dangerous.
Phew! That was close.
You just can't make TV like that any more.
Manchester University, 1979 and drama students Ade Edmondson
and Rik Mayall are in their final year, spending most of their
time either partying or dreaming up avant-garde performance comedy.
Manchester University at the time was full of kind of creative
people in a kind of arty way, or a political way,
and we were definitely the low, lower brow.
Quite a lot of violence, quite a lot of Becketty type stuff in it,
but that was our, that was our spectrum, really.
Creating a comedy group with three other students, Rik and Ade
would perform at the university's student union and in local venues.
There was five lads, me and Rik,
and then two friends of his from his hometown,
Mike Redfern and Mark Dewison.
And then Ade came along quite late.
But we were called 20th century Coyote,
as a pun on 20th century Fox.
Oh, some really bad jokes.
It was part of that kind of anarchic,
anything kind of goes atmosphere of the time.
But we sort of developed a kind of bond of playing together,
myself and Rik especially,
and we sort of went on to become a double act.
And in that first year we kind of always thought that we'd
be an act, but there wasn't a kind of circuit for this kind of thing,
the only thing that existed was the, kind of, working men's club circuit.
I tell you what, there's not many Pakistanis knocking about since the
Chinese have found out they taste like chicken, have you noticed?
LAUGHTER
Stand up was abominable.
It'd been kind of taken over by working men's clubs.
Most stand ups were just appalling, racist, sexist, you know
and just banal.
This coloured boy, this is true,
he was fed up he said, "Man I am browned off with this country."
It felt, I think even at the time,
was feeling very, very old-fashioned,
almost like a dying art form, a dying way of doing things.
IN EXAGGERATED CARIBBEAN ACCENT: I'm going' on holiday,
you know, to get a bit of colour.
Comedy had been either people in dicky bows doing mother-in-law
and vaguely racist material, or it had been Oxbridge people
doing very clever stuff.
The two extremes of TV comedy at the time were the
university comedy typified by Monty Python,
and then the Bernard Manning style working men's club.
But most of comedy at that time that viewers saw
was the bland domestic sitcom.
We'd had The Good Life and all these sort of very charming, gentle
sitcoms, where people loved each other and lived in nice houses.
All a million miles from sleazy Soho,
the breeding ground for the comedy revolution to come.
I suppose we moved to London about a year or two after we left uni,
but at the same time The Comedy Store opened.
In 1979 an insurance salesman called Peter Rosengard put out ads
calling for new acts, hired a strip joint for two nights a week,
and started Britain's first alternative comedy venue.
The opening night, Clive Anderson was there and a few other
people from Footlights, I think Emma Thompson was there,
and Sandi Toksvig and they did some sort of act, sketchy kind of act.
Everything that we do flows entirely from um, flows entirely from, er...
..er off, um...
..prompt?
Cuff. Er, off the cuff.
But then most of the people were just kind of...nuts.
INDISTINCT
At the very beginning there were all sorts of bits of comedy,
there were people who had other jobs and quite...
some of them not young.
I've only got five minutes, even the wife gives me six!
Listen, no, no, listen, no, shut up, no, shut up, well...
When a fella's talking, shut up.
Mixed in with people fresh out of university or fresh
from NOT going to university...
Can you hear me? CROWD: No. No?
Right this is...
..right.
Quite a good mish mash. I liked it best in its early days
when they were sort of good, bad and indifferent
and quite anarchic in the same way.
You'd get the oxtail soup and you'd have a can opener
under your bed, you'd get it out and you'd open your tin of oxtail
soup and you'd pour just a little bit of it on your legs
wouldn't you? Like that and you'd pull your goggles down
and you'd pour most of it in your wellies
and then you'd jump up and down, wouldn't you?
And you'd bang your head on the wall and you'd shout at yourself
in Welsh, "Iechyd da! Iechyd da! Iechyd da!"
The first time me and Rik went there Alexei was trying some new material and he was awful.
He came on and pretended to take the audience hostage with a gun.
No-one laughed.
I just bombed horribly and then the act that was on after me was Rik and Ade.
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Open the door.
They just got this amazing reception because, partly cos
they weren't... They weren't that drunk frightening man with the gun.
Open the door, who?
LAUGHTER
Open the door, please, I want to come in.
LAUGHTER
Open the door, please, I want to come in, who?
LAUGHTER
Look, just open the bleeping door!
They were definitely distinctive, and you could,
I'm reluctant to say I could say they were going places cos
I can never work out who's going to be good and bad but they...
They were, they were a popular pair of performers from the word go.
Another double act, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson,
had toured their show, Rank, where they played over 40 characters
but were struggling to find venues willing to put it on in London.
When The Comedy Store opened we went down there
and did our act for a pint, I think it was,
or two, and we were pretty much taken with it from there,
from that night, and we wrote loads of material, devised our act, The Outer Limits.
Good evening, we are The Outer Limits. Yeah, so, er, relax.
And that's where we met Rik and Ade.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, like to tell the gooseberry joke.
Gooseberry. What is it? I told 'em, I told 'em. Right OK.
What is it when there's a man and a lady who don't want to have
a baby, but they want to do the bits upstairs, they want to play babies.
Yeah. So they've gotta rub a gooseberry bush,
which is trembling with fright. Trembling.
Cos they're trembling with fright, shaking the gooseberry
bush which shakes... All right? ..which shakes a gooseberry off,
hits one of the buttons the lift goes up and down.
Goes up and down. What's that?
LAUGHTER
A gooseberry, yeah!
People from television were coming down and watching them and trying to
work out if they could do anything with them, and Paul Jackson, who
was quite a young producer at the time, had his finger on the pulse
and had seen all of them and thought, you know, I really want to do something
with this new alternative comedy which is happening.
Boom boom...
We set up a stage, cabaret style, had the audience,
and we recorded the first Boom Boom Out Go The Lights.
My name's Rik, OK?
It was to be the first time the nation would be exposed to the
intense poetry of Rik.
Theatre... What are you theatre?
Whenever I'm near to the theatre, I...
LAUGHTER
Shut up!
And also the guitar strumming hippy, Neil,
played by Nigel Planer.
Um, hello?
Can you hear me?
OK...
But producer Paul Jackson wasn't convinced the double acts,
which also featured Ade Edmondson and Peter Richardson,
would be right for TV.
I was very, very new.
I mean, I produced it really badly, you know.
I didn't include either Ade or Peter Richardson,
which was really a stupid thing to do
and completely my fault, and caused a lot of issues later on.
At some point, um, maybe because of the Boom Boom Out Go The Lights,
or something, Peter had a falling out with Paul Jackson.
I think they had a minor falling out. Retrospectively,
we can look back and make more of it maybe than...than there was.
Boom Boom also showcased many of the alternative comedians
who would go on to perform in The Young Ones
and the Comic Strip, including Keith Allen, Tony Allen...
This drunk homosexual Pakistani squatter
takes my mother-in-law to an Irish restaurant, see,...
..and Alexei Sayle.
You know I'm trying to articulate all them thoughts us mods have,
you know like, er, duh...
It wasn't a very successful show, Boom Boom Out Go The Lights, I don't think.
It failed to capture the excitement of what we were doing
in the clubs, you know, bottle that raw energy, I think, really.
Lise Mayer had known Rik in his student days
and they were by now partners.
We watched this programme go out and we just thought the joy
of stand up is the live experience, and it's not meant for television.
So, we sort of had this inkling of an idea to do a sitcom.
Also at Manchester Uni with Rik and Ade,
though two years below, was Ben Elton,
already known as a prolific comedy writer.
A chance meeting between Rik and Ben
would change the course of comedy history.
Good evening, my name's Kevin Turvey
and here's a good one.
Why does Mrs Thatcher always wear barbed wire underwear?
She doesn't, it's a joke.
It's 1981 and Rik Mayall is beginning to make
a name for himself as the roving investigator Kevin Turvey
while he and his partner, Lise Mayer, have had an idea for a new
comedy show about four students living in a rundown house.
We talked about the idea of a house,
where you could see each act in their rooms,
but nobody really knew how to do it
until Rik and Lise came up with the actual idea for
The Young Ones.
That's what we're going to do, we're going to be students,
Alexei's going to be the landlord and we then had a form.
Rik and I were sitting around in the saloon bar starting
to write the pilot of The Young Ones and Ben turned up
and Rik just went, "Ben, you know we should get Ben to do it with us."
Ben's a really quick writer,
which is obviously the attribute that you most wanted then.
So we went, "Sure, you know, let's do it together."
No, there was you, there was Lise, who was also going to be writing it
and we'd discussed this idea and put it together that night.
And that very night this was typed, I went home.
Is this it? This is it, this is... this is the pilot episode.
This is it? This is the pilot episode.
Ben wrote a first-draft script
and he came round to my flat,
I can remember reading it.
I thought, "This is absolutely brilliant,"
and I can remember going back to my wife and saying,
"He's made a script out of it," or "He's done it."
"He's got all the different elements, it's all in there, and we've got to do it, it's brilliant."
I mean, I can, she'll testify,
I came away saying, "God, if I'm not in that, I'm going to slit my wrists."
We had this idea for the sitcom and the only person that we knew in
television was Paul Jackson, who had done Boom Boom... Out Go The Lights.
Rik came to me and said,
"We're thinking of writing a sitcom, would you have a look at it?"
And so he gave me this script written in biro on A4 with,
I always remember, a big coffee stain on the front page
and I read it and I loved it, I just loved it.
Pilot episode, first draft, January 1981, I'm practically shaking.
Come on, let's read a bit, read the first... Come on.
This is the...this is the original. Yes, this was it.
OK. So Rik is dancing. Right, OK.
Rik is dancing.
That was brilliant, pity about Cliff Richard.
I'll be Neil. What about him? He's holding the lentils.
What? Well, what about Cliff Richard?
Are you trying to be funny? Er, er, er...
Because if you are, I think it's in pretty poor taste, that's all.
I'm not a fridge, you know.
First gag. Nobody got it, but it was fabulous.
Shame about Cliff Richard.
What about him?
What?
What about Cliff Richard?
Are you trying to be funny?
Um, um...
Because if you are, I think it's in pretty poor taste, that's all.
I'm not a fridge, you know!
We shot the pilot and we were all very pleased with it,
I mean, not least, we were pleased that we'd managed
to make the script work.
Oh, no! that plane is going to crash on us!
Paul showed it to the people upstairs
and they didn't understand it
and they got Ben to write an essay,
an essay, that was the word used,
to write an essay explaining why it was funny,
because they couldn't see it.
The bosses at the BBC didn't think revolutionary poets...
It was off the floor.
..lentil-hugging hippies and psychotic medical students was for them,
so they decided to put the pilot on the shelf,
but then...
Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be able to say to you
welcome to Channel 4.
We'd been commissioned
by the thrusting, as yet to start Channel 4,
who were sort of hungry for material, which was lucky for us.
Channel 4's remit as the new kid on the TV block
was to offer alternative entertainment,
and Peter Richardson's comedy collective The Comic Strip
was the perfect fit.
Thanks, Anne, you really are a proper little housewife,
not like George, she still thinks she's a boy.
I think it's stupid being a girl, I wish I was a boy.
Really, George, it's about time
you gave up thinking you're as good as a boy...
The Comic Strip was a loose band of writers and performers,
including Rik, Ade, Nigel
and the relatively unknown female double act French and Saunders.
Steady on, you two, the hols have only just started.
You seem so grown-up, Julian.
The BBC was made nervous by the approach of Channel 4
and they decided that they had better,
in that dreadful metaphor
that was used at that time by BBC executives
and still occasionally is,
that Auntie would have to let her bloomers down a bit.
And I suddenly got this phone call saying,
"Aren't they those people that are in your show?"
And I said, "Yeah," and they said, "Could you get a series together?"
And on the 9th of November 1982,
perhaps slightly unaware of what it was about to unleash
on Russell Harty's audience,
the BBC listings magazine warned viewers to be there or be square.
# Once in every lifetime
# Comes a love like this
# Oh, I need you, you need me
# Oh, my darling, can't you see?
The pilot was broadcast as the first of six episodes shown
the week after Channel 4 went on air
and a new chapter in comedy history was written.
# ..shouldn't be afraid... #
And The Young Ones came in and it was just this burst of energy,
for want of a better word, anarchism.
I mean, you could see it, they just threw everything into that show.
I've got a leg. I mean, Vyvyan, that's not unusual.
No, no, look, I'm supposed to write an essay on it, right,
but I think I'm just going to stick it on the bonnet of my car.
Around that time there was a bit of a vacuum when it comes to
what kids of a certain age found funny on television.
And this, The Young Ones, just completely filled that gap.
It is stupid, it is facile, but it's ours and it's funny
and my parents don't really like it,
that means I'm going to like it even more.
Ow!
It's new and exciting and it's young people just doing it for themselves,
exactly what they want to do and,
really, The Young Ones was the first time
you saw that happening on TV,
it was like they'd sort of come into
the BBC like a bunch of vandals...
It's got a letterbox.
..and were just doing their own thing.
And, you know, as a young person I had been a student,
suddenly, here was a programme you felt was being made for you.
We are students, after all! We're...we're old enough to vote,
we're old enough to do things to girls, we can go to prison, we can drive,
last week I even got into an X film, for Christ's sake.
We were basically channelling our acts
and Pete was supposed to be playing the kind of fixer,
which is what he played in the act with Outer Limits.
We had intended the character of Mike
to be played by Peter Richardson
and then, at some point, maybe because of
the Boom Boom... Out Go The Lights, or something,
Peter had a falling-out with Paul Jackson.
I was led to believe that Peter would never do the series if I was in charge.
I think there is a possibility, I know no more,
but I think it may be that Peter was led to believe that I wouldn't
have him in the show, which was not true, I wanted him in the show
because not having him in the show presented us with a major problem.
So we had to cast.
We actually nearly gave the part to Timothy Spall,
who did an absolutely brilliant reading,
but they just decided that, facially,
he and Nigel were too similar
and they both had that hangdog thing going on
and then we went to see a play called Can't Pay Won't Pay,
which was on in the West End
and Chris Ryan was in it and he was absolutely brilliant.
So we thought, you know, we've found our Mike.
Did a guy with a lisp phone?
Er, no-one phoned you, Mike. Well, we haven't got a telephone. Yeah.
He came in with that character he's got,
which is kind of different from how I'd originally seen it,
he went out the room.
He said, "OK, I'll come back in," and he went out the room
and we thought, "Oh, where's he gone?"
And then he came back in, like transformed, and said,
"Right, here you go there, there, you go there,"
and we were all like, "Oh, shit! That's the guy."
The seat's all sticky. Oh, it's probably just the red paint.
Aaaaarrrghh!
OK, Neil? It may seem heavy-handed for £1.50
but when I lend somebody money I expect to get it back,
do you know what I mean?
I didn't know any of this,
of the fact that Peter Richardson was going to be doing it.
And, Neil, I want that £1.50 back by Wednesday,
otherwise another moose dies.
It was just this new thing
and then, as I became involved,
I could see how much of a group these people were...
..how much of a unit they were...
..and what a different world it was
that I was coming into.
It was difficult for Chris coming into this, you know,
very cliquey group of people, many of whom had known each other for years.
And, you know, when you've been students together you have an understanding,
and even those that hadn't, they'd worked together.
I think Chris, you know, gets as many laughs as anybody else
and, also, I think with another comic in there,
with five comics in there, it would've
overbalanced it, really, and so it's...
Because Chris is an actor, he provided a kind of solidity
to that part, I think.
I never knew there was so much in it.
Chris is very funny, er, I love Chris and I...
..and I think he's a brilliant performer.
I don't think Mike is the best character that's ever been written,
you know, but he fulfils a very important function, which is,
you know, in that house there needed to be a parent
and he is the parent.
Coming up, we uncover the truth
about the mysterious fifth housemate who most viewers
and even some of the cast missed first time around.
Everyone talks about this fifth housemate, I don't remember it
because I didn't even know it was there in the first place.
Welcome back,
as we find out how four students from Scumbag College
shook the comedy world.
Look at us, squabbling,
bickering...like children.
These were not characters people had seen before on TV
and certainly not in sitcoms,
so it upset some people that people were being so cruel and nasty
to each other,
but they were all adorable and everybody loved them.
One of the characteristics of the characters,
they were full of opinions without really having any idea
of what was actually going on in the world.
None more so than the people's poet
and revolutionary sociology student Rik.
Pollution, all around
Sometimes up...
Sometimes down...
But always...
..around.
I love the vulnerability of Rik's character.
You've bought me a present.
What is it? What do you do with it?
Ludicrously vain and full of himself,
he's obviously a rubbish poet,
he's obviously not studying very much.
It's a telescope!
A telescope with a mouse in it!
He's obviously turned up at university,
at Scumbag College
and, um, thinks, right, I'm an anarchist
and I want society to be radically reimagined.
Are these lentils South African?
Well, um...
You bastard! You complete and utter bastard!
Why don't you just go out and become a policeman, become a pig?
And, then, when you scratch under the surface
he doesn't know what he's talking about and it's just such
a funny observation of people who are about that age.
Oh, far out! Really great, Woodstock!
Adrian Edmondson's Vyvyan character
is all elements of The Young Ones
but pushed to the nth degree, he's just super pointlessly violent.
And I was a bit scared of Vyvyan, I think, as a little kid
because, um, he didn't seem to know when to stop.
People always call Vyvyan the punk
but he wasn't meant to be a punk, he was meant to be someone
who had just cherry-picked all the violent aspects
of a lot of different cultures
so that he was a bit heavy metal, a bit punk.
Well, you've got to remember Vyvyan is a medical student.
Yeah? Vyvyan, could I have an anaesthetic?
Of course you can.
And our experience of medical students in Manchester,
where you had a big medical department,
was that they were boorish, horrible, fighty, sweary people
who are probably your consultant now.
Watch my trick, you bastards, or I'll kill you!
Ommmmmmm. Brilliant, eh?
Well, Vyvyan's interesting philosophically, I always thought.
What am I saying?
No, I mean the lead, this doesn't reach.
The idea that, you know, I can't plug the telly in,
or I can't get the plug to reach the wall.
Therefore, I'll move the wall nearer to the telly,
rather than the telly nearer the wall
is an interesting kind of philosophy.
Oh, that's right, Vyvyan. If the mountain won't come to Muhammad,
smash the drawing room to pieces, that's very Buddhist, isn't it?
It's born of thinking, you know,
it's just thinking the other way round.
Now that makes him kind of exciting, I think.
Hello, Vyvyan! Oh, hello, Mum.
Well, fancy seeing you here, I didn't know you lived in London.
Yeah, I love Vyvyan, you know, it's bizarre
cos I only played him for 12 episodes.
This is a friend of mine called Mike.
This is a friend of mine called Neil.
Hello.
And that's a complete bastard I know called Rik.
A lot of unkind people say it's the only character
I've only played but...
I wonder how many lentils I've ever eaten in my life.
Four.
You have the quite mad punk, um, Vyvyan Basterd,
and then you have Neil the hippy
who is this extremely peace-loving figure,
although in a satirical way.
Hey! I just had a great idea.
Well, the hippy character, Neil, in a bunch of losers
he's even more the loser
because he's not, obviously, not the most aggressive.
He isn't particularly vain but it's another line to go down.
That's funny, I don't remember ramming a skewer into my head.
And Nige, back then,
he was such a hypochondriac, bless him.
Everything was wrong.
The bread was wrong, you know, there's too much dust in the studio.
You know, the light's hurting me eyes, all that sort of stuff.
He's got over that now but he was hard work back then.
It's got to be said and he'll admit that, I'm sure.
The character of Neil is kind of all my own toxic bits,
um, that you sort of splurge out onto everybody else.
Guys!
So there's a lot of me in Neil.
PHONE RINGS
Guys, listen, I've got something amazing to tell you...
Answer the phone, Neil. What? Answer the phone.
Oh, yeah, right.
Oh! Floppy discs.
The kind of moaning...
We're only here on time because you kept me awake all night
pacing up and down and ringing bells.
Listen, man, sleep gives you cancer, everyone knows that.
The whingeing...
Just hang on a minute, has it got any sugar in it?
Yes, a little bit. Yes, yes.
Oh, well, I can't because, you know, sugar rots your teeth and gives you brain damage.
And the kind of self-pitying manipulation of everybody else.
Look, guys, there's some dinner on the floor if you want it,
but if you don't, like, that could also be cool
because, I mean, I only spent all day cooking it, right?
And, like, I was the one who got it together to put the lentils
on to soak last night,
but maybe we should just get a cat, right, and give it to the cat
because it's obvious none of you can be both...
Guys?
Maybe it'd be cool if I just died, right?
All the sort of faults and flaws that I had at the time.
Of course, I'm grown-up now.
As well as the four housemates, there was, of course,
the Balowski family, all played by one very angry alternative comedian.
Hello, everybody! Hello, Mike, my little Thunderbird puppet.
Thunderbirds are go, yeah?
# Come on, let's twist again, like we did last summer... #
I remember saying right away that I, you know,
just being an absolute prick
and saying, you know,
I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to
be like a single character, like.
All right, somebody call a taxi?
You know, I want to be like a multiplicity of characters,
I don't want to be the kind of...
You know, do, like, experimental and break the fourth wall.
Hi, I am Jerzy, crazy, wacky landlord, you know I like very much
your English punk rock stars,
you know, your Lulu, your Dave Clark Five,
oh, yes, I think they are F-A-B, that's English for stupid, yeah?
They came up with the idea of this loosely, of the landlord,
Jerzy Balowski, which is a sort of weird kind of pun
on Jersey, pull off your jersey.
Oh, hello, pussycat! Here's your uncle Billy.
Here! What you doing in a bucket?
Come on, everybody, let's play Daleks!
Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!
Alexei just used to stroll in and scare everyone
and then just leave, it was gorgeous.
All right! Nobody move
and nothing will happen.
We would rehearse during the week
but Alexei wouldn't normally come to rehearsals
because he was doing something else,
so in the script it would normally read "Alexei's bit"
and then you would kind of find out what he was going to do
when he showed up on the day.
The only thing that unites is Dr Martens boots!
Dr Marten gave boots to the world,
so that everybody had comfy feet.
They're classless, matchless, heat resistant, waterproof
and retail for only £19.99!
You have to remember that, at the time,
we were all a bit scared of Alexei.
Because I'd been the authority figure in the club
they didn't know that, by then, I needed them
more than they needed me, really, I always think.
I've always been very grateful.
It brought me in front of a mass audience.
Another record, boys!
And it wasn't just Alexei who got national exposure through the show.
Sorry, guv'nor, apples and pears, tit for tat,
I love London town and I was at Violet's funeral.
They brought their mates from The Comedy Store with them
including Tony Allen, Keith Allen,
Andy de la Tour...
What happens if your car mounts the pavement?
And, of course, Dawn French...
Hello, everybody, I'm the Easter Bunny!
..and Jennifer Saunders as knife-wielding femme fatale Helen.
Still, at least my surname isn't Back.
It'd be awful, wouldn't it?
Helen Back.
My surname is Mucus.
It was like a gang of mates had just turned up
and were doing their thing
and, you know, it was only later you realised,
oh, my God, yes, that was Jennifer Saunders,
or any number of the other people that they had on the show,
and these were the first times that we were seeing these people
and, you know, there was a whole new generation
of really funny writer/performers coming through.
There was a pool of comedians that were alternative comedians,
and because they were alternative comedians,
there weren't that many of them, so they stuck together.
Medieval torture! Our first torture victim is, Gwendolyn?
And our first victim tonight is... is Pusspecker the Dull!
Everybody who was anywhere
and, when you look at it now, you go, The Oblivion Boys...
Not Chopper, Jimmy? Jan? Big Jan? Yeah.
I'm his dad.
Hale and Pace.
I bet,
in one second,
both my legs will fall off.
We're all in there, somehow, just, like, tiny lines
but, um, a group of people
who were serving, in many ways,
the fact that The Young Ones got the big gig and deservedly so.
Yeah, I think there was a definite feeling of,
look, there's a whole gang of us, you know, let's all get on telly.
Well, we had a row and I said something about the Pope.
That's a bit stupid, you know she's Catholic.
Yeah, I know she's Catholic, I didn't know the Pope was.
They just said to us, "Look, do you want to be in it?"
And we said, "Yeah, all right, then."
They said, "Well, do a bit of your own material, if you want."
So a lot of the times when we were on it was really nice
because we were getting big laughs using our material.
Didn't get paid for it, just saying. Didn't you?
While the house had a constant stream of alternative comedians passing through,
not many viewers spotted that there was an actual fifth housemate
who could be seen randomly placed in the back of shot.
Er, I do remember the fifth housemate
and I do remember the reason why we did it.
This is my favourite programme!
Oddly enough, we thought if anybody buys the VHS,
for that's what there was around, at the time, of this programme,
when it comes out,
we want to give people something that perhaps they might've missed
first time round, that if you roll backwards and forwards on the VHS,
which of course you can't do when you watch the programme go out...
OK. Have you got them closed? Yeah, ready.
..you might spot something that perhaps people didn't spot.
Everyone talks about this fifth housemate...
You're so uncompromising these days.
I don't remember it
because I didn't even know it was there in the first place.
This is revolting.
It was not that there was a fifth housemate,
but just that there had been a party at this student house,
at some point in the past,
and somebody had never left so, occasionally,
when you walked along, you could see a girl sitting in the hall.
Viva el presidente!
Coming up, more insight into the making of The Young Ones,
including some very rare footage which has never been shown
on British TV before.
I said, you complete wanker.
That's what I thought you said.
I didn't know you were allowed to say wanker on television.
It's great seeing outtakes, isn't it? It's marvellous.
Welcome back. We're celebrating the most anarchic, imaginative
and incendiary sitcom ever created.
They just went for let's blow everything up.
If some cupboard was going to fall off the wall,
the whole wall would come down,
if a fight was going to break out,
they weren't just going to slap each other,
they were going to actually, you know, apparently kill each other.
Argh! Ha-ha-ha!
It was unshootable.
I mean, it was full of all the stuff that we eventually did shoot,
but your first reaction was, well, we can't do this.
Hey! I've just...
On paper, The Young Ones was a cartoon comedy world where
anything could happen, but they had to perform each scene
and stunt in front of a live studio audience.
Oh, no! The front door's exploded.
It got ridiculous. At one stage was a sequence where we actually had
a lion-taming act in the television studio. I was beginning to think,
"Well, you know, I've seen some stuff, but this is unbelievable."
By today's standards, it was actually extremely dangerous,
what we were doing.
There was very little health and safety.
We didn't have a health and safety department in those days.
I'm not saying we did anything unsafe but there wasn't
anybody saying, "I want to test this out before it happens."
And they had to concentrate on what they were doing
because there were so many explosions going on
and so many sort of, you know, quite carefully timed special effects
and quite dangerous stunts that were happening
that you can't just muck about.
If you're going to whack someone round the back of the head with a frying pan,
you've got to be in exactly the right position,
otherwise, you're completely scuppered.
We had a nine-man special effects team
who you could go to the day before a live recording
and ask to make a series of ridiculous and expensive props,
which they probably had never made before.
You know, a sofa that turned into a coffin.
A brick that exploded when you bit it.
Some of these bricks explode! That's good, innit?
They made a brick out of Ryvita and...
..and they put a compressed-air gas canister into it
and I bit into it and they'd blow it up and, of course, it really hurt me.
There were quite a lot of injuries and accidents, yes.
The one I remember the most of all we kept in, which is the cooker
that explodes and Rik sort of going back in slow motion from it.
I suppose we shall just have to cook our own supper.
And I think that even surprised the special effects department.
They loaded it before lunch, it was a lunch break,
and they came back and... and somebody didn't know
it had been already loaded, so they put another load in.
I think they'd meant a little - boom! - like that
and it was a massive, proper,
you know, Die Hard explosion right in his face.
The two I remember were the blowing up of the gas stove
when Rik tries to light the stove
and the falling through the bed when Rik and Ade are fighting in the bed.
It was pretty terrifying.
I mean, it's one of those things where it's not easy to rehearse,
you just have to do it.
Basically the bed was hoisted up into the grid,
out of the view of the camera,
and then, on a cue, the release button goes...
I am not a virgin! I am not a virgin!
I remember we really hurt ourselves.
We're working with some weird stunt men, you know.
They were... What they thought was going to happen
didn't always happen.
I remember clunking my head on a...on a bit of wood.
As we landed, it was a bed full of boxes,
so there was some kind of cushioning in the thing
but it dropped from, well,
more or less the height of this kind of studio, you know, a good 20 feet,
and then we carried on. Of course, it got a huge cheer, you know.
They were ridiculous things to do live, really, but we wanted to, and
it takes some bottle because in both cases the dialogue goes straight on.
I'm not a virgin! I am not a virgin!
And I just loved that. I loved the ability of the visual effects guys,
I loved the bravery of the actors.
It was magic to be there.
Oh!
Cut, that was brilliant. It was a bit too early.
Have a look at it back. Reset, cue in.
Brilliant. No questions...
They were fearless, just threw themselves about.
We were obsessed with entertaining a studio audience.
You have spent over a year in the same field.
We were very keen to get people laughing properly
and to be a live show, you know, that was recorded
and then played out. So we... we tried very hard to make a lot
of the stunts work, you know, dead live, which was really exciting.
This was a programme that relied on audience feedback
and the audience enjoying it
and understanding it.
Don't forget, when an audience came to see The Young Ones
being done they had never seen anything.
We had a kind of compunction to entertain
the TV audience,
the audience that were sitting there watching the recording.
Hands up who likes me.
And we were very new, we didn't know,
we just thought it was our job to kind of entertain, you know?
And we enjoyed it, you know, it's good fun messing about with cameras.
I said, you complete wanker.
That's what I thought you said.
I didn't know you were allowed to say wanker on television.
Oh, it's great seeing outtakes, isn't it? It's marvellous.
What happened? Sorry, fucked.
Oh! Oh, well, then you're probably not Dr Kildare, then, are you?
Sorry.
Not "love Neil"!
God, that sounds far too much like
"Come and get it like a fucking bitch sex machine!"
Yeah, you're right.
That'll never get out, will it?
You did notice that it was mostly Adrian, wasn't it, messing up, really?
Neil! Neil, can you kill...? Oh, fuck it, sorry.
Come on! It was, it was all Adrian, really.
You know there's plenty of people standing round
with fire extinguishers.
So the fact that there's a fire going on just behind me didn't...
I kind of enjoyed that,
rather than, you know, getting scared. Eurgh!
You fascist junta!
The sound effect is what makes it so funny
because the sound effects are ridiculous.
Impossible!
If somebody's hit in the bollocks with a cricket bat,
you kind of want to hear it.
So the sound department would prepare
a load of sound effects and would fire 'em in live
and you get a much bigger reaction, it's much funnier.
Traitor.
THWACK!
So I think the cricket bat in the bollocks
was a real cricket bat,
smashing a watermelon to pieces.
That's the perfect effect.
Mike, you bastard.
We knew that you could get a good joke by banging your head.
You know, there's nothing funnier than violence.
We went for deliberate childishness, as well,
kind of cartoons where someone could get hit on the head
with a frying pan and get a flat head
and then, you know, they wouldn't have any permanent damage,
and I think also it was probably the only way
we could get away with the violence, as well,
is to emphasise the cartoon nature of it.
Aaaaaargh!
In cartoons they can be forced down a drainpipe,
or they can be chopped into lots of pieces by a meat cleaver.
You know, automatic meat cleaver and things like that.
And we were just trying to kind of get a bit of that.
Sort of extreme version of Laurel and Hardy
with people smacking each other.
There's been nothing like it, really, since.
Well, there are one or two exceptions.
Ah-ha-ha-ha!
Can't speak for Vic and Bob, but, I mean, yes, when you see them
sitting at a desk whacking each other with heavy frying pans...
Argh!
There's no way that you can't say, "They never saw The Young Ones."
I'm not saying and I don't think for a moment they saw that
and thought, "Let's do that," but I think it did open up
avenues for people to think, "Well, yes, anything goes."
When we recorded The Young Ones, this was pre CGI.
There were very, very basic special effects
and what started out as being, perhaps, a bit of a problem
became its joy.
What have you done? Turn it into a roller disco?
Uncanny!
I look at scenes now and think, "That's really embarrassing."
There's like a roller disco with three people in it
and bad disco lighting.
But, um... You know, and a wobbly set.
But, you know, that was sort of part of it as well,
that it all looked a bit, you know, shitty and handmade.
Sometimes I really wish that I was a fly on the wall.
I suppose that I would, too, if I wasn't one already.
Oh, who are you?
We're just the fly-on-the-wall documentary film crew.
We wasted a whole afternoon once getting a chip
and a carrot to skate on a plate, which took about four hours.
I remember saying at the end of that, "OK, we're not doing that again, guys."
I don't know why the bits are in there.
I think it was just an attempt to be weird.
You want to drink with me?
It helps you for...forget.
And also to say, "We're not just a normal sitcom, you know."
"We're... You don't know where you are with us."
There he is, Vyvyan, get him!
Do you know what my favourite vegetables are, eh? Peas!
5ps, 10ps, 50ps...
Some of those inserts were kind of fun and some of them are just,
if you look at it now, I think, some of them are just stupid.
You're as like as two peas. I hate that expression.
It's so patronising.
Perhaps, surprisingly, not everyone was a fan.
We had four really funny characters.
You know, so why... why bother ruining it with this...
..these arch attempts to do cult?
I'll see you, Jimmy.
I've got the seven of spades!
The cult was in the four of them.
You know, it was in...in... That was the new thing.
Four horrible characters bitching and fighting.
Farting their way through life.
FART
That was the fun.
Not some bloody tomatoes.
# Just got to ketchup with my love
Coming up, we see how The Young Ones divided the audience.
I thought that was the biggest load of rubbish
I've ever seen on television, quite honestly.
How it became a cult is bizarre.
1982, and The Young Ones has just been broadcast for the first time.
When reviewed by mainstream media,
the show usually divided the room,
between those who got it and those who didn't.
If it was noticed at all by the business,
for example, reviews and that kind of thing,
it was pretty universally derided.
First we're going to discuss The Young Ones.
I thought that was the biggest load of rubbish
I've ever seen on television, quite honestly,
and I'm not exaggerating when I say "ever".
I think it was a waste of, um, licence money.
In my memory it was watched by very few people.
I think the audience figures
are something like 1.5 million.
You know, how it became a cult is bizarre.
# People try to put me down
# Just because you never buy a round... #
Unaware of the growing popularity in the playgrounds and common rooms around the country,
Rik, Ade and Nigel went on tour with Rowland Rivron's band,
Ken Bishop's Nice 12.
We turned up in Nottingham and there was something like 5,000
people outside that didn't have tickets that were trying to get in.
It was so underplayed.
They didn't realise quite what an appeal they had across the country.
# Talking about my generation!... #
The tour was originally booked off the back
of another of Rik Mayall's comedy creations, Kevin Turvey,
but the public had other ideas.
I remember feeling right on it, you know.
It was a really funny version.
Why don't you all f-f-f-f-f-f...
Fuck off!
We felt like we were a band.
# Don't try to dig what we all say... #
The amount of energy Rik's putting out,
it just looks impossible.
Ade and I are, you know, we're also putting some energy out,
but Rik's is just off the scale. It's incredible.
Not my fucking generation!
# My generation! My generation, baby!
# My generation... #
You know, cos we're London-based you don't really get an idea of what
people are doing up in Nottingham and Leeds and Hull and all that.
You turn up there and people were just going completely bonkers.
And it was like, "Wow, we've really underestimated this."
It was a lesson in how powerful the telly is,
having been in people's living rooms.
What is that little white dot?
It's a little white dot.
Oh, very clever.
Must be a really old telly.
What, hippy?
It's a sign, that little white dot.
It means something really heavy.
It means there's no more telly.
It's time to go to bed.
Shortly after the series had finished, the BBC came to us
and said, "We'd like to release the series on two VHSs."
By this time I'd gone back to doing another series of Two Ronnies.
The Two Ronnies used to get about 18 million viewers
and the VHS sold about 100,000.
The Young Ones got three million viewers
and the VHSs sold about a million.
I'm sure that the video recorder played a part in it.
People would write to us and let you know they would have watched
a particular bit again and again and tried to analyse it.
It allowed people to become slightly obsessive about it.
I've heard of people recording it
on those little push-button tape recorders.
Not the visual, just the audio.
Holding it up to the telly,
so that they could remember all the lines
and then learn them and do them at school.
And that's kind of where it... that's where it caught on, really.
And by the time, you know, their parents heard it,
um, it was too late.
# Bad news... #
Alternative comedy was the new rock and roll,
but it wasn't just because of The Young Ones.
On Channel 4, Peter Richardson's Comic Strip collective
had continued making short films,
including this contemporary of Spinal Tap, Bad News.
They had this beautiful thing where the BBC,
they were doing no-holds-barred anarchic comedy,
slapstick stuff, and then on Channel 4,
under the helm of Peter Richardson,
they were doing The Comic Strip Presents... where they were
able to write these half-hour and hour beautifully crafted comedies.
Stop! Stop!
What's the matter?
You're supposed to come in there, Colin.
All I'm asking, Vim, is that you let me sing just one number.
Yeah, I know, I know and I say you can't, OK?
Well, it's just not fair.
Look, this is my band, so it's fair.
Well, if that's the way it is, it's my brother's PA
and I say that you all can't use it.
The only reason you're in this band is cos you got the bloody PA.
So it was the same gang virtually, yeah, on both channels,
competing with ourselves.
Well, the Comic Strips are...written by different people.
You know.
Erm, so quite a lot of The Comic Strip's written by Pete,
who's a kind of...
Has a particular style.
Very different to The Young Ones.
Here, what time do you call this, then?
Well, I smashed the window, Spider, sorry.
Sorry. Never mind, Den, it's all anarchy, innit?
Look, are you ready now, then? No, sorry, I've gotta go and sign on at half ten. What?
Joke, get it? Ha-ha-ha!
While Channel 4 was The Comic Strip's natural home...
Heavy metal, top of the class, stuff the media up your arse.
..back at Auntie Beeb, the growing comedy cult status
of The Young Ones meant they also wanted more.
And in 1984, the second series was launched.
# Once in every lifetime comes a love like this... #
I mean, the fact that it was slightly delayed maybe helped us
because people were even more keen to see it
and I think, episode for episode, it's a slightly better series.
That's what we agreed when we first came.
You do the cooking, I'll look after the plants and the goldfish.
Yeah. And what did you make me cook on that first day?
Er, sausages. It was a Tuesday.
Yeah, sausages and...?
Sausages and plants and goldfish!
The second set of scripts were tighter.
More ambitious in some ways, but more practical in other ways.
And I think also they were working together better.
They'd seen what did work and what didn't work.
How's that, Mike? Nice one, Vyv. Time for tea. You win.
The stories got better.
I think it got more satisfying.
We just got that little bit better. It was less shambolic.
Erm, there is something I've been meaning to tell all of you.
For some time.
Erm, I went to see the doctor today and...
Well, I think I'm pregnant.
And with cult TV show status,
the writers were able to get guests on the new series
who weren't just mates from the Comedy Store.
As well as it just trying to, you know, find jobs
for all our friends and put them in it,
we could, you know, ask Terry Jones to be a guest in it.
You know, people that we really kind of loved and admired.
Ashes to ashes.
Funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie.
Shut up!
As well as having a Python on board,
the second series also featured Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones
from the ground-breaking sketch show team Not The Nine O'Clock News,
who many saw as forerunners to alternative comedy.
I liked the bit where you shoved the drill in the virgin otter's face.
That wasn't in Bambi, Vyvyan!
It was in the sequel, Neil.
Bambi Goes Crazy Ape Bonkers With His Drill And Sex.
Is that true, Bambi? Did you do a Disney nasty?
The idea of having three or four generations of comedians
all in the same thing is a beautiful and lovely thing.
That's a great little baton pass back to the late '60s, early '70s.
It seemed the young revolutionaries were quickly becoming
part of the comedy establishment.
Or were they?
We got invited to the BBC Christmas party, which was a huge event
and very exciting for us.
There's Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett
and there's, you know, all the great luminaries of BBC entertainment.
Rowland and Ade got completely drunk
and the entire party was just a nightmare
of trying to stop anything too disastrous happening.
It culminated in, erm, Rowland getting his knob out
and showing it to Penelope Keith, I think.
It's difficult to remember precisely what happened,
but there was a lot of places we weren't allowed to go back to.
I'd like to think Rik was to blame.
Music!
Maybe they weren't ready for comedy respectability quite yet.
They kicked off the second series with the Bafta-winning Bambi,
where the four housemates from Scumbag College
take on the toffs on University Challenge.
Rah-rah-rah! We're going to smash the oiks!
You know, it's a rotten shame.
I went to see the careers officer in big college yesterday.
And he said that all they'd got left was chairman of British Rail.
Well, I wanted to be Director General of the BBC.
Yeah, it's rotten.
They gave it to Scapper,
just because he directed our world tour of Hamlet
and wrote our hilarious review, What Ho, Darkie!
Yeah, that's a weird idea of what Oxbridge people are, isn't it?
"Yah-yah-yah, we're going to smash the oiks."
"Daddy's got a Porsche."
Hello and welcome to another edition of University Challenge.
This week the teams represent Footlights College, Oxbridge.
Rah-rah-rah! We're going to smash the oiks!
Yes, that's the spirit.
Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson
and whatnot doing their very poshest accents
versus the sort of Scumbags above them was a hilarious contrast
and a bit of a comment on the nature of younger
working-class and middle-class people
appearing on the comedy scene.
What is the chemical equation...?
BUZZER
I've got a Porsche.
Yes, well, that's not exactly what I've got written on the card,
but I knew your father, so Footlights lead by 25 to nil.
Daddy sends hugs.
But not everyone in the Young Ones camp was happy to be
associated with the Footlights brigade.
Mel Smith was there playing the security guard and I said,
"What's he doing?" You know.
And then they said, "Oh, you know,
"Griff's in and Hugh's in and Emma's in and Stephen."
LAUGHTER
And I said, "But aren't these people the enemy?" You know.
This Oxbridge fringe.
So, your starter for ten, no conferring...
And they just said, "No, that's you, that's just you."
He always had a suspicion of us,
cos he had this kind of unionist, hard Stalinist,
Leninist background
and we were far too middle class to be able to have ideas.
Achtung! BUZZER
It's not an automatic.
EXPLOSION
Fair enough.
Hey, I'm depressed!
It's nine below zero.
He's bloomin' right, you know!
MUSIC STARTS
There were all so many different kinds of accidents that made it
kind of perhaps groovier than we thought.
It was made in the variety department,
not the comedy department.
And I did that very purposefully because you got two days
in the studio in variety,
and in comedy, you only got one day in the studio.
# When we're together... #
And it got funding from the variety arm of the BBC budget,
which meant it had to have a band in each week.
So it wasn't us putting a band in,
it had to have a band in and therefore we got a young band in,
so we always got a groovy band in.
# You're my kind of climate
# Swinging lost paradise
# Met a Mexican in the kitchen
# Said rule your life by the dice. #
But I think for the audience, as well, that having a live band
in the studio kind of lifted the atmosphere, it energised everybody.
You know, we got, you know, we got to pick bands we liked to be in it.
# The ace of spades
# The ace of spades... #
Any band that was, you know, was feisty and energetic.
All those bands really fitted in seamlessly with
the sort of vague anarchy and the sort of energy that was going on.
# The ace of spades. #
Motorhead were very easy and sweet.
Most camera aware and professional,
in terms of where the cables would go, which camera was on.
Lead guitarist forward, lead singer forward, back, you know,
Lemmy was in charge of the band
and was, it seemed to me, very professional.
The bands were important when they added to the story.
I had Madness go playing in a pub
and the idea was that there was a bridge between a scene that
happened in the house and a scene that happened in the pub.
And while Madness was playing, I was able to do the progress
through the streets and all that kind of stuff.
# Good morning, miss Can I help you, son?... #
Where it gets harder to justify is when somebody opens the bathroom
and there's Dexys Midnight Runners standing in the bath.
Point three - Dexys Midnight Runners playing free
daily in the university library.
I told them to set up in our lavatory.
# Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh. #
I couldn't tell you why they were in the bath.
Apart from the very banal reason was the fact that was probably
the set that wasn't used before and after, so by having them in the
bathroom...was ludicrous but it was also probably a practical necessity.
# Jackie Wilson said It was Reet Petite
# I kind of love you but it knocks me off my feet
# Let it all come down. #
There were other bands who were a bit more all over the place.
Only pop music can save us now!
MUSIC STARTS
I got a call from a secretary who said,
"I've got a Mr Scabies on the phone for you."
And he said that they're prepared to reform The Damned, who'd
broken up, to record one song called Evil Nasty for the show.
# Catch the tide at the blood
# My TV screen is sick and blood... #
So they recorded the song in the studio,
which all went well,
and afterwards we went out to have a curry at an Indian restaurant.
# Catch, catch a horror... #
One of the band members, Captain Sensible,
had his own song in the charts previously, called Happy Talk,
and he decided to sing it on the table
in the middle of the Indian restaurant.
And the rest of the band didn't really like him or it,
so they started throwing onion bhajis at him,
and he, er, got all upset.
There was a huge fight in the Indian restaurant
and the whole band broke up and that was the end of it.
So The Damned basically reformed
to specifically do one song for The Young Ones
and then bust up in an Indian restaurant two days later.
Coming up...
..we see why they included bizarre images in the middle of the shows...
..and why the BBC stopped them putting in the final one.
The BBC got a phenomenal number of complaints.
When the second series was broadcast in 1984,
Margaret Thatcher had been in power for five years.
There had been a war with Argentina, miners' strikes and riots.
The nation was divided
and there was no doubt which side The Young Ones were on.
It was comedy about the people that were reacting against society.
It was like, you know, sort...
..almost ridiculing those people that were...
..that thought they were really right on.
Back to Victorian values! I hope you're satisfied, Thatcher!
Margaret Thatcher sort of supplanted the mother-in-law.
So we no longer did mother-in-law jokes,
but people would make jokes about Margaret Thatcher.
And the character who became the embodiment of the anti-Thatch
brigade was sociology student Rik.
Neil, the bathroom's free,
unlike the country under the Thatcherite junta.
Ben radicalised Rik as a politically minded
kind of anarchist.
I think it was brilliant to make Rik's character just
go on about Thatcher.
Thatcher's Britain.
Thatcher's bloody Britain!
In its targets, The Young Ones takes on Thatcher...
Honestly, whenever anything explodes in this house,
it's always blame Vyvyan!
Well, who do you suggest we blame?
Thatcher!
But the more traditional area, erm, from which it got a great
deal of material was the old-fashioned bland BBC TV sitcoms.
Just in time to watch Oh, Crikey on ITV.
No, uh...
LAUGHTER
My trousers have fallen down and the doctor's in the sitting room.
Lucky the vicar didn't see.
A grade-three horror was that the vicar might pop round unexpectedly.
And all those things are very brutally sent up in
The Young Ones.
Vicar!
LAUGHTER
Oh, crikey!
What The Young Ones did was to say
you can take a very conventional form,
erm, the flat-share sitcom,
and you can rip it apart, you can tear it apart.
We wanted to break the mould of other sitcoms
so it was very easy to parody other sitcoms.
No, no, no, no!
We're not watching The bloody Good Life!
Bloody, bloody, bloody!
To so explicitly criticise another TV comedy, as a 14-year-old,
you're like...oh, my God, they really hate each other!
I hate it!
It's so bloody nice!
I assumed all comedians knew each other
and that they probably all lived in a house.
And it was just so thrilling to watch someone just not care
what another comedian might think of him.
Felicity treacle Kendal
and Richard sugar-flavoured snob Briers!
It's just exciting, isn't it?
Especially when you're that age,
because you assume that all adults get on.
They're nothing but a couple of reactionary stereotypes
confirming the myth that everyone in Britain is a lovable
middle-class eccentric,
and I hate them!
That was a highly articulate outburst, Vyvyan.
I only hope they're not watching.
I did a series with Richard Briers,
erm, some years after The Young Ones.
The first day, we had a conversation about it.
And I think I said The Good Life stands up better.
In terms of parody, we weren't afraid to parody
youth programmes, as well.
And now let's seek some action here on Two,
with a new programme for young adults -
Nosin' Aroun'.
There's a scene where, erm, Ben Elton's playing, like, this
cool sort of hip youth sort of TV presenter.
I expect, like us, you're not into all that stuff your old man's into.
Right? So we just thought we'd have a programme for us.
Right? And this is it.
Nosin' Aroun'.
It was taking the piss out of the shows that the BBC were
putting on as youth programmes
that we were all too sophisticated to actually fall for.
Really great.
Hi, well, I'm standing up here on this scaffolding
because that's what this programme is all about.
Shock! Yeah, right, OK.
OK.
And then Rik kicks the telly in.
And I remember thinking, yeah,
a lot of the telly that's designed for me makes me
want to kick the telly in.
The kids are united, we will never be divided.
Did you see that?!
Did you?! The voice of youth!
They're still wearing flared trousers!
The Young Ones were kicking in the conventions of television,
doing anything they could to challenge established norms.
Yes, yes, yes...
We were constantly trying to,
erm, mess with it. You know.
Neil, I hate you.
Oh, wow, don't bring me down and hassle me, Rik.
I'm really confused.
I'm just not feeling myself today.
You could do a really good joke,
couldn't you, about feeling yourself?
HE SNORTS
Shut up or I'll kill you!
OK, guys, come on.
As the one guy said to the other guy who was getting fed up,
I'm getting fed up.
I want to wash my smalls
and I don't mean dip my tiddlies in a glass of water.
All those weird asides.
Some of them work, some of them didn't,
but they generally just gave it the sense of newness and difference.
One of my favourite bits were in the dressing room and
suddenly we're playing these actors who are playing the characters.
I hate him.
He drinks like a fish.
Well, he's got no talent. Alexei who?
The kind of creativity of that, the daring of that was...
..was remarkable, really.
It challenged the sitcom form,
so people started playing with the form a lot more.
You can see that now through to Mrs Brown, where
she breaks the fourth wall.
That kind of comes, you know, from... The Young Ones started
breaking the fourth wall and talking direct to the camera.
I'm so hungry I could eat my own ear wax.
And we all know how horrid that tastes. Right, kids?
Breaking the fourth wall, speaking and looking at camera
and confiding in camera was all part of the whole
package of what The Young Ones was about.
This is actually very serious.
They're breaking character and they're breaking the fourth wall
and they're talking to the audience in the studio but
they're also sort of, like, talking to the audience back at home.
I just really felt that you got to know Alexei Sayle.
I'm a Marxist comedian, you know, but, erm,
since I've been doing a lot of television,
a lot of my Marxist friends have accused me of selling out, you know.
Like they make me march at the back on demos, you know. And...
He didn't care about convention.
He didn't even care about the sitcom he was in,
that he would just stop the plot to talk about something else.
But honest to God, I have not sold out.
Anyway, round about now,
I usually have a Pot Noodle, yes.
When you watch it, it just feels like...that anything goes, really.
And, er, it feels really exciting and sort of a little bit...
a little bit dangerous.
But it wasn't Vyvyan, Rik or Alexei who got their knuckles
rapped by BBC bosses
but uber-producer Paul Jackson, who
came up with the idea of subverting not just the sitcom, but TV itself.
We'd heard that students were obsessing over the VHSs.
Have we got a video?
Yes, we've got a video!
The flash frames was a silly thing, really.
I thought to myself, let's try and give them a little something,
a little private joke for the real fans.
It was just pictures.
There was a jumping frog, there was a dripping tap, there was
a big end credits from a cowboy movie.
We put them in to see if anybody would notice or say anything,
er, and assuming that probably would get picked up, then people would
start to try and freeze-frame on the VHS, which would be a long process.
The BBC got a phenomenal number of complaints
and people accusing us of trying to brainwash them
and, you know, make them buy things or do things.
And so Bill Cotton, who was the head of the whole thing,
called me into his office and he said,
"What is this nonsense you've been putting flash frames in?"
And I started to explain and I said, "Yes, Bill, it's..."
And then the very last episode, which was the only episode that
hadn't broadcast, we're going to have one frame
which says something like...
That would have been the punch line to the whole thing.
It was actually a constructed joke over the six episodes,
but we were never allowed to punch it.
I've been waiting here half an hour.
Half a bloody hour, Neil! Being hungry.
Waiting for my tea and listening to that bogey bum.
Tell you another weird thing about why it...
..why it may have caught on is, erm...
..is that because it was about students...
..I think schoolkids liked it.
And, bizarrely, I think they enjoyed the language.
And the language was forced on us by kind of censorship.
So we couldn't say very many rude words.
I think we could say bastard,
so we said it a lot.
You bastard! You utter bastard!
ALL: Well, what a complete bastard!
Things like ploppy pants and you know, ruddy,
and you know, it made Rik into...
..into a kind of more puritan kind of thing because he wouldn't swear.
Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Sitting on the door mat!
All the little doggy wants... Well, have a little bit of it.
It's the kind of language of the playground, really.
When teachers are about, you're not allowed to swear.
So we were kind of copying their behaviour.
You know, using other words.
This is it! It's really happening! Who needs qualifications?
Who cares about Thatcher and unemployment?
We can do just exactly whatever we want to do.
And do you know why? Because we're young ones.
Bachelor boys.
Crazy, mad, wild-eyed, big-bottomed anarchists.
At the end of the second series, in typical Young Ones style,
the writers simply drove them off a cliff in a homicidal homage
to the Cliff Richard film Summer Holiday.
# We're all going on a summer holiday... #
I think it's right they stopped after two.
I was relieved, you know, to finish, in a way.
But I think it was the right decision.
I mean, I always felt that they should have done more,
we should have done more.
We just thought we'd done that
and that we weren't short of other ideas.
We didn't see that you had to kind of
mine your success for ever and ever.
I'm on board the freedom bus heading for good time city
and I haven't even paid my fare.
I think probably two series was probably,
yeah, let's draw a line under it
and kill them all.
Look out!
Cliff!
TYRES SCREECH
That's my favourite scene, in that bus.
I remember the day shooting it.
And we all went back where the camera was and saw a London
bus actually go over a cliff and crump at the end and explode.
The Young Ones were lying at the bottom of a cliff in a burning bus.
ALL: Phew, that was close!
But after the break, what they did next,
and how Ade went up in flames
when a Dangerous Brothers stunt went horribly wrong.
And I'm saying things like, "Put me out, you bastards!"
And they're thinking, "Ah-ha-ha-ha! Hilarious!"
It's 1985 and The Young Ones are dead.
ALL: Phew, that was close!
Sort of.
But Rik and Ade were resurrecting their earlier act,
the Dangerous Brothers,
cranking up the danger on new alternative comedy show
Saturday Live, hosted by none other than Young Ones writer Ben Elton.
What are you clapping? We haven't done anything yet, for God's sake.
Everyone at home thinking,
"What a bunch of sycophantic hypocrites." I don't know.
The idea of Saturday Live was
if you liked to complete the legacy that had started with
The Young Ones, by providing a variety show that felt different
and was different and again was
aimed at a particular target audience
that we felt hadn't been catered for by mainstream television.
You've got Julian Clary and Jo Brand
and the Oblivion Boys
and Ben Elton, of course,
so there was a new energy about stand-up then.
My name is Richard Dangerous and this is Sir Adrian Dangerous.
And this is Vim!
But even in the edgy early days of Channel 4,
TV bosses weren't prepared to let these two into people's homes
without some sort of safety net.
Apart from one episode, ours was the only pre-record, simply
because it had so much violence, and occasionally a crocodile.
Richard, there is a live crocodile in the studio.
I am going home now, goodnight!
I remember watching them rehearse.
I thought they were going to kill each other.
They used to rehearse in the car park.
Now you keep quiet while I set fire to you.
I do remember the towering inferno cos I remember it going wrong.
Everybody keep quiet, while he sets fire to me.
We decided we needed a safe word if things are going wrong.
I said, "I'll probably play with it like this
"and pretend it's gone out of control.
"So don't, you know, don't rush in, thinking that I'm in trouble.
"If I am in trouble, I'll shout out the secret word."
Er, so they set fire to me and I'm doing all this...
You bastard!
THEY SHOUT AT EACH OTHER
And I can't remember the safe word.
Argh...
And I'm saying things like, "Put me out, you bastards!"
And they're thinking, "Ah-ha-ha-ha! Hilarious!
"He hasn't said the word yet. He must be fine."
Well, viewers,
erm, can you spot what went wrong?
And I lost quite a lot of nasal hair, my eyebrows and eyelashes.
Probably several years of my life.
All for comedy.
While the Dangerous Brothers were burning brightly on Channel 4,
there were notable sightings of the four housemates back together.
In 1986, The Young Ones reformed,
adding an unlikely member for Comic Relief.
Put on your dancing trousers and get down to the total
and utter king of rock and roll, Cliff Richard!
# Got myself a crying, talking, sleeping... #
We were all a bit embarrassed,
cos the series sort of takes the piss out of him a bit.
Oh, Cliff, sometimes it must be difficult not to feel as if,
you really are a Cliff.
When fascists keep trying to push you over it.
Are they the lemmings or are you Cliff?
Or ARE you Cliff?
But then you're in the studio, you're looking through
the glass and you realise, "Oh, no, he really does sound like that."
He's got that voice, hasn't he?
That's actually... That's amazing.
That's an incredible voice he's got.
And we're all sitting there a bit in awe of Cliff, for real.
# ..sleeping, walking, living doll...
ALL: Living doll!
I do remember him taking his cans off
when I was shouting my bits too loud for his ears.
# ..she satisfies my soul
ALL: # Fies my soul Fies my soul?!
Yes, fies my soul. It's raunchy, Vyvyan.
# ..walking, living doll... #
What does this button do?
I'm not convinced that the Cliff Richard fans rushed out
to buy the Living Doll single and probably were slightly miffed
that Cliff had got involved in this sort of thing.
But I say good on Cliff Richard.
If you don't buy this record, then you're all utter, utter,
utter, utter, utter...
Living Doll was a number one hit.
But fans of The Young Ones wanted more episodes.
Instead they got Young Ones, the next generation.
They came up with a very simple idea. We wrote The Young Ones
about university, when we were at university.
Why don't we write about the fringes of showbiz?
Did you get laid nine months ago
and more specifically to a rather young popsy who claimed to be a fan?
We-he-hell,
that should have made you suspicious for a start!
They're playing showbiz characters.
There's an agent and they've got this big apartment.
And the slightly self-conscious thing about this is
what it's like to be famous and a personality.
Filthy Rich & Catflap - it certainly had its moments,
but the better moments were all a bit like ones that you'd
have got in The Young Ones.
I said wait here!
Oh, a bit of a different tone now, isn't it?
I think people wanted it to be more of The Young Ones
and it was a bit, but not enough.
Look, we've got two problems.
There's no food and the Nolans, what are we going to do?
Eat the Nolans!
And it becomes clear in retrospect
that that was Rik and Ade building up to do Bottom, really.
And they cut away my character
and all of the rest of the extraneous showbiz stuff.
They realised, well, we don't need that.
We just need the two of us, you know,
hitting each other with saucepans.
I think Bottom is probably the child of The Young Ones.
You know, the anarchic quality of The Young Ones...
No, no, no!
The two of them are instinctive.
They're brilliant at fighting each other.
Bathroom cabinets are picked up, smashed over their heads.
They're beating each other senseless.
It seemed Rik and Ade enjoyed trying to kill each other,
and not just on TV.
Get this, Tony!
They took the award-winning Bottom on the road in five sell-out
national tours.
Rik was the best reactor to being hit.
I used to kick him in the bollocks quite a lot on stage
and he would do this kind of uh... thing like that.
Which seems really odd to do, you know.
Arms and legs going like that.
But it's really effective.
Their popularity inevitably saw them absorbed into the mainstream,
though occasional flashes of comedy anarchy could still be seen.
You're the daughter I never had, Rebecca.
Nigel Planer has regularly reunited with the old gang.
Yeah, The Comic Strip's still going.
We made a film, year before last,
erm, with Maxine Peake, erm, called Red Top.
I played Rupert Murdoch.
We've got an election coming up next month.
Have you decided who you want as Prime Minister?
So The Comic Strip carried on, carries on.
Chris Ryan has been playing aliens in Doctor Who,
while Ade Edmondson has also been spotted in a galaxy far, far away
in the latest Star Wars epic.
Ben Elton has had success after comedy success in stand-up,
sitcoms, novels and even stage musicals.
Every night, 7.30, I walk here
and wait for her to come to that very bedroom window.
And Rik's role as Greg Davies' dad in Man Down
was as risque as anything he'd done.
That is one of the most romantic stories I've ever heard.
I know.
Seems crazy now, doesn't it?
Anyway, all's well that ends well.
Eventually,
I fucked her against that wall.
What?
Yeah. That very wall.
I just don't think Rik Mayall is capable of a bad performance.
Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh!
Any of the stuff he did, if Rik Mayall is in it, it's just...
it's like a British Kitemark seal of approval.
In 2014, the nation mourned,
when after a fatal heart attack, we lost the people's poet.
He was just 56.
It's awful for all of us having lost Rik...
..but I think that he had a really great life, you know.
And he did what... mostly what he wanted to do.
He was an immense talent, you know.
He was, he had funny bones, as you know,
the comic cliche.
Yeah...
I'm not very good at soppy...
..television.
APPLAUSE
When Rik was awarded an honorary doctorate by Exeter University
in 2008, he used the ceremony to share with his fellow
students what life had taught him.
Let me give you youngsters a present.
Five mantras to carry with you through your lives.
Number one, all men are equal,
therefore no-one can ever be your genuine superior.
You fascist junta!
Number two, your future is as bright as you make it.
Yeah, come on, everyone.
Let all your hairs hang out. Do whatever you want.
Number three, change is a constant of life,
so you must never, ever lose your wisdom.
The world's stupidest bottom burp, Vyvyan, Britain!
Number four, if you want to live a full and complete human life,
you have to be free.
I'm on board the freedom bus, heading for good time city
and I haven't even paid my fare!
And number five,
love is the answer.
You go out there and have yourselves a fucking good life!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
After he died, someone said,
"Oh, he was a gentleman who didn't behave in any way like his
"characters off screen and was just totally calm and professional."
And that's just...
You couldn't get further from the truth.
I just knew you were going to say that!
Argh!
In 1982, The Young Ones stormed the bastion of the BBC,
the home of the suburbanite sitcom.
And after they left in 1984, comedy was never the same again.
With television comedy, erm, you can
pretty much draw the line before The Young Ones and after The Young Ones.
Quite often when you look back on something in the past, you think,
oh, it was outrageous in its time.
You look back and then you think, oh, doesn't seem so outrageous now.
But I think The Young Ones still stands up.
I don't think you could have helped but be influenced by The Young Ones.
They just explode in such a way and every young person watched it
and felt it was for them.
It was such a unique show. As a generation of performers,
we were the first of a new kind of comedy and so all, you know,
all the other performers had kind of followed on from us.
I think The Young Ones changed comedy.
It made a big space for new ideas
and it encouraged lots of young comedians as well to think,
well, right, there's something in this new school of comedy.
Everything felt a little bit different after The Young Ones.
It gave everybody an opportunity to be a bit braver.
I think it was a turning point from traditional comedy,
if you want to say it like that, to something more exciting.
I don't think anyone ever starts off thinking,
"Ooh, we're going to be revolutionary."
You start making something because you like making things.
We were just trying to have fun.
And, do you know, I haven't seen it for donkey's years.