Rik Mayall

The slap that shook alternative comedy

Rik Mayall never waited for permission to enter a scene. He burst through the door, screamed at the camera and spat out a brand of humor that mixed cartoon violence with a political venom unheard of at the BBC in the early 1980s.

At the University of Manchester he met Ade Edmondson, and there began an alliance built on slapstick and rapid-fire insults. Together they blew up London's clubs with The Comic Strip, because they needed to break away from the stale, wig-and-joke humor of their parents' generation.

But television was too small for him.

In 1982, Mayall premiered The Young Ones, and the screen was flooded with grime, anarchy and surrealism. His character, Rick, was an anarchist poet vying for the attention of a world that ignored him. The show was such a hit that audiences reached five million viewers in a late-night slot aimed at niche audiences.

Then came Alan B'Stard. In 1987, Mayall traded the chaos of student life for the expensive suit of a Conservative MP in The New Statesman. Here he showed he could be cruel and elegant at the same time (as long as there was a wad of cash involved).

A Quad Bike Accident and Five Days in a Coma

Mayall's career always moved at a frantic pace until reality forced him to slam on the brakes. In 1998, he suffered a quad bike accident on his Devon farm that left him in a five-day coma and with aftereffects he would carry for the rest of his life.

Doctors gave him little hope of recovery, but he returned to the stage with the same manic energy. By 1991 he had already released Bottom with Edmondson, and after the accident he resumed the theater tours of the series where the punches were real and sometimes the blood was too.

It was a stroke of luck.

Even Hollywood came calling with Drop Dead Fred in 1991, although the American film industry never quite knew what to do with an actor who refused to do things halfway. In 2001, he shot several scenes for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone playing Peeves the poltergeist.

But the director decided to cut all of his scenes from the final edit so as not to distract from the overall tone of the film. Mayall collected his full salary and, in several later interviews, simply said the movie was garbage.

His last major appearance was in the series Man Down in 2013, where he played the father of Greg Davies. In every take he improvised physical attacks against his on-screen son, because he understood that comedy is, above all, a matter of physical impact and rhythm.

It was his final big trick.

In 2014, a forensic report determined that an acute cardiac event after going for a run killed him at age 56. His family scattered his ashes on his Devon property, and British comedy lost its loudest engine.