Talking Bottom E-Book

Paul Tanter

• Herausgeber: Wilton Square Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 464

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In 1991, a new comedy hit British screens and, at first glance, it was just another sofa-based sitcom. Soon, it became clear Bottom was a masterpiece. Mixing cartoon-style slapstick, knob gags and Beckettian nihilism, it left an indelible mark on British comedy. Written by and starring comedy legends Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson as reprobates Richard Richard and Edward Hitler, their depraved universe unfolded over three chaotic BBC TV series, five explosive live shows and a formidable feature film. Celebrating the legacy of TV's greatest losers Richie and Eddie, this book features thorough 'Bottom Inspections', 'Bottom Nuggets', unseen photos, draft script excerpts and interviews with cast and crew sure to reignite fans' love for Rik and Ade's unmatched talent for toilet humour. Crafted by the creators of the popular Talking Bottom podcast Paul Tanter, Angela Pearson and Mat Brooks, this is the ultimate guide to the outrageous and unforgettable sitcom that continues to delight and disgust audiences today.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Series One

Episode One –

Bottom

Smells

Episode Two –

Bottom

Gas

Episode Three –

Bottom

Contest

Episode Four –

Bottom

Apocalypse

Episode Five –

Bottom

’s Up

Episode Six –

Bottom

Accident

Waiting for

Bottom

Series Two

Episode One –

Bottom

Digger

Episode Two –

Bottom

Culture

Episode Three –

Bottom

Burglary

Episode Four –

Bottom

Parade

Episode Five –

Bottom

Holy

Episode Six –

Bottom

’s Out

Bottom

? That’s very nearly an arseful!

Series Three

Episode One –

Bottom

Hole

Episode Two –

Bottom

Terror

Episode Three –

Bottom

Break

Episode Four –

Bottom

Dough

Episode Five –

Bottom

Finger

Episode Six –

Bottom

Carnival

The Live Shows

Bottom Live – The Stage Show

Bottom Live: The Big Number 2 Tour

Bottom Live 3: Hooligan’s Island

Bottom Live 2001: An Arse Oddity

Bottom Live 2003: The Weapons Grade Y-Fronts Tour

Guest House Paradiso

aka ‘The

Bottom

Movie’

Series Four:

Bottom

ing Out

Images

Notes

Acknowledgements

Note on the Authors

Copyright

Cover

Contents

Begin Reading

To comedy gods Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. We wrote this book to indelibly celebrate your genius. Thank you for shaping our funny bones and for the enduring laughter.

With love and violence from Paul, Ange and Mat (and all the lads on the Ark Royal).

Foreword

After the success of The Young Ones, which I loved working on, Paul Jackson told me that Rik and Ade were planning on writing a series and I thought, ‘I have got to work on it.’ Paul and I had been working as producer and director on several projects, so I pushed myself to the front of the queue to direct it. I was not disappointed: the pilot script was pure Rik and Ade, it was really funny and almost certain to offend – perfect.

The opening scene is memorable to me because we were gently insinuating that Richie was going to kill himself. We had rain running down the outside of their dismal patio windows in the TV studio; it was a great set-up to introduce the audience to the gloom of their sad existence. As with all new shows, there was some trepidation as to how the studio audience would react but Rik and Ade had enough fans present, who reassured us that we were on the right track. The pilot episode did not transmit first; we decided to give that honour to a rip-roaring episode called Bottom ‘Smells’.

I like to think that Rik, Ade and myself had a sympatico relationship. I almost instinctively knew what they wanted and I was desperate to make the shows as close to their vision as possible, and then in (rare) moments exceed it. The violence was crucial to the series and I spent considerable effort trying to capture it at its most brutal, but also retaining the cartoon quality that made it hilarious. Antics included testicle twisting, frying-pan assaults, monster fistfights, head squashing (mainly in a fridge), banister headbutting, broken legs, sliced-off fingers, exploding TVs … the list goes on.

There is no doubt that the success of Bottom is down to Rik and Ade’s writing, their performances and the huge effort from everyone working on the show. It was groundbreaking in its ability to push the boundaries of conventional sitcoms to absolute breaking point but never actually descend into anarchy.

The longevity of Bottom is clearly due to its uniqueness; there have been other comedies in a similar vein but the magic combination of Richie and Eddie and their outlandish, yet strangely relatable, stories make it stand the test of time.

This book is testament to that longevity; don’t just read this bit and slyly slide the book back onto the bookshop shelf, as there is great stuff beyond this, written by Bottom Maniacs (I made that term up) who really know what they are talking about and have penned that talking into this outstanding ‘cult guide’, and I thank them from the heart of my bottom.

Ed Bye

Introduction

Once in every lifetime comes … a show that defines people’s childhoods. For the generation slightly preceding ours, that show was The Young Ones; a groundbreaking, anarchic situation comedy starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson that not only smashed away the preconceived notions of what a sitcom could do, but redefined the format. Although we saw the show while growing up, we didn’t grow up with it. For us, the jewel in the sand that is often missed by people, the show that rarely makes it on to the ‘best sitcom’ lists, the defining show of our formative years, was Bottom; a groundbreaking, anarchic situation comedy starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson that not only smashed away the preconceived notions of what a sitcom could do but also redefined the format. Who says lightning can’t strike twice?

When Bottom first blew its way onto British television, it had a lot to live up to, with the shadow of the seminal The Young Ones still looming large. The eighties student smash had lasted for the classic British sitcom standard of two series and done, ending with a literal bang in 1984 when Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike went up in a Cliff-caused fireball as their double-decker bus careered into a quarry at speed from a great height. It did for eighties comedy what The Goon Show did for the fifties, Beyond the Fringe did for the sixties and Monty Python’s Flying Circus did for the seventies – it became a defining characteristic of the decade and influenced a generation of budding comics and writers. Having co-written it with Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer, Ben Elton subsequently went solo, scripting Filthy Rich & Catflap, a follow-up effort featuring three of the four main cast members of The Young Ones.

The Young Ones had chronicled their student years but now Nigel Planer returned to join Rik and Ade in a sitcom charting the madness of their entry into the world of showbiz. But despite moments of promise, audiences didn’t warm to a show about a narcissistic rising/falling/stagnating star, his seedy manager and alcoholic minder. Something new was needed into which Rik and Ade could channel their talents. They were both constants through The Comic Strip Presents … films on Channel 4 through the eighties. Their Mr Jolly Lives Next Door can now be seen as a virtual Bottom prototype. Bad News and More Bad News still stand up as classics, and are only not better known by the general public because This is Spinal Tap reached a wider US audience. Both Rik and Ade dipped a toe or two in Blackadder (for many, Rik Mayall stole the show after just two short appearances as Lord Flashheart) while Rik also stuck it to the Tories with his portrayal of Alan B’Stard in Marks and Gran’s bitingly satirical political comedy The New Statesman. However, TV needed them back together doing what they do best: delivering faultless performances as characters that were written for them – by them. They knew what they could deliver. On the surface, these characters may previously have appeared to be adult cartoons (The Dangerous Brothers in particular) while, actually, they were being savagely clever and were able to peel back the surface of the human condition.

Rik and Ade famously met in 1975 during freshers’ week at Manchester University, where they had both gone to study drama. While there, they would put on shows such as God’s Testicles, where they planned to hang from pink duvet covers but were foiled when they found they wouldn’t hold their weight. Rik formed the comedy group 20th Century Coyote with Lloyd Peters in 1976, and Ade was brought on board later that year. The act took them (successfully) to the 1979 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the play Death on the Toilet. By the time Rik and Ade headed to London to pursue careers in comedy, 20th Century Coyote consisted of just the two of them. They were formative in the rise and success of Peter Richardson’s Comic Strip comedy club, playing there often as The Dangerous Brothers, an early incarnation of the kind of squalid, violent characters they would return to often and eventually perfect in Bottom.

While the advent of streaming platforms has seen the normalisation of full series being commissioned and filmed, broadcast television has traditionally tested new ideas with a single pilot episode, some ‘non-broadcast’ and some transmitted, to see if a show could fully realise its potential. Filthy Rich & Catflap had not been received as well as hoped and ran for just one series. Evolving from The Young Ones, many of the early elements of Bottom are seen in Filthy Rich & Catflap, with more violence, drunkenness, political satire and, notably, the names Richie and Eddie being used for the first time. But the critical response was scathing enough to dent the BBC’s confidence sufficiently that, by the time Bottom was on the horizon, it didn’t automatically go to series; a pilot needed to be made.

Holing up in an office at Paul Jackson Productions, Rik and Ade produced a pilot script that was the culmination of where their previous work and characters had been heading. For the first time in UK sitcom since Fawlty Towers, the stars were also the writers and the pair created a richly inhabited, fetid universe of detail and meaning. A pair of loser characters who are best friends but also best enemies, squabbling like a bitter married couple trapped together. Even the title was a gag, with the show originally called Your Bottom, in the hope that announcers would have to say, ‘Up next on BBC Two … Your Bottom,’ and that people talking about the show would say to each other, ‘I saw Your Bottom on TV last night.’ It may sound puerile but many smirk at the thought – it’s so joyously silly.

‘The Young Ones was your teens. Then let’s say Filthy [Rich & Catflap] was about your twenties. Bottom was about your thirties where youth has gone, it’s just shit and life is fucking nothing.’1

Rik Mayall, Rik Mayall: Lord of Misrule documentary

Filmed in front of a live studio audience, the pilot episode of Bottom was made in 1990 and, while it’s slightly rough around the edges, all the elements of what made the show so great are there in that first incarnation of Richie and Eddie: two losers on the fringes of society, enduring miserable existences on a pittance under a Tory government, both seeking solace wherever they can get their kicks: booze, birds and each other’s bollocks. It’s a wonderfully dark start to a prime time BBC sitcom to literally have the first person you see on-screen staring out of a rain-lashed window into the grimness of Hammersmith, before immediately sticking their head in a gas oven in a seeming suicide attempt. Ultimately, this is revealed to be a cunning ruse to con his best friend in the world out of a drink through guilt that never comes.

So many sitcoms take at least the first series to find their feet, but it’s clear that the pilot was the only dry run Rik and Ade needed to iron out the kinks. The first series hit the ground running with a fully formed, disgusting universe inhabited by a pair of three-dimensional characters who clearly knew and were comfortable with each other (and enjoyed causing one another discomfort). This is, of course, in part down to the pair’s history together as performers and, being the writers, they knew the characters from inception. There’s no ‘bedding in’ period that’s obvious in the first series of other ‘people living in a flat’ shows such as Only Fools and Horses or Men Behaving Badly, where chemistry between the performers takes the duration of the first season to gel. In the case of Men Behaving Badly, the chemistry was so lacking Harry Enfield left and was replaced by Neil Morrissey. Whichever series of Bottom you may hold as favourite, there is no denying the instant quality of the show from the start.

‘A long time ago, deep in the mists of time, two blokes – I was one of them, Rik Mayall was the other – decided to make a career out of beating the shit out of each other. It was a tempestuous, anarchic and occasionally quite dangerous time – we both required hospital treatment on occasion – but above all, it was bloody good fun. We made each other laugh and, luckily for us, we made audiences laugh.’2

Adrian Edmondson, Bottom: Exposed documentary

This episode, ‘Contest’, got the show the full commission it deserved and, by the time series one was ready to broadcast in 1991, the decision was made to move it to the position of third episode in the run, with ‘Smells’ therefore destined to be the world’s introduction to Richie and Eddie. ‘Smells’ contains the same ideas established in the pilot – desperate loneliness, living on the fringes of society in squalor while suffering (or dishing out) violence. The episode even opens with another rain-drenched, dirty window that looks out into the dreary night sky of Hammersmith, before pulling back to reveal Richie and Eddie as they come home after an unsuccessful night on the pull. These themes hold strong through the first series; even amidst the ultra-violence and cartoon absurdity there is an abundance of Beckettian ennui pervading the narrative as the pair eke out their hours waiting for something, anything, to happen.

‘It was the early nineties and we were in the era where a new invention called The New Man had come in … gentle, caring, considerate … That is not Richie and Eddie, is it? They kind of bucked the trend. I think they were representative of people, much more so than a lot of other TV shows. Even though it’s madness, it’s rooted in reality, which a lot of TV shows weren’t.’3

Ed Bye, Bottom: Exposed

While the pilot followed a more stage-like narrative, playing out in real time from beginning to end (a device they would only ever use in one other episode – series three’s ‘Hole’), the other episodes of the first series follow the more traditional format of time-jumping through a three-act structure. This, combined with the familiar sitcom settings of a living room complete with sofa, a pub and assorted other locations, means that in many ways Bottom is a traditional sitcom. It also conforms to the British sitcom staple of ‘people who would otherwise avoid each other being trapped together by circumstance’ – a trope seen in many of the best British sitcoms ever made, including Red Dwarf, Blackadder, Porridge and Steptoe and Son. Indeed, the parallels with Steptoe and Son were numerous. As Ade generously admitted in a 2018 tweet: ‘Galton and Simpson were the masters. And also very kind – they never sued Rik and I for basically doing a pale copy of Steptoe and Son and Hancock’s Half Hour, and just adding a bit of mindless violence.’4

Rik and Ade were already fans of Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers when they met at university, and the influences are clear in Bottom but with the violence heightened beyond farce to live-action cartoon levels. The pair’s Dangerous Brothers stunts were already legendary, including the infamous incident where Rik set Ade on fire and Ade forgot the safety word, resulting in the stunt team delaying extinguishing the flames. The fights and violence in Bottom continue in this tradition with explosions, broken legs, falls from high buildings, fingers crushed, bollocks kicked, electrocutions, eyeballs shot with fairground guns and disabled veterans pushed down lift shafts. The depravity and squalor is front and centre with vomiting, voyeurism, lard eating, urine drinking and the attempted murder and disposal of a gas man. Woven through it all, binding it together, are solid, well-written gags coming thick and fast, and a nihilistic sensibility that elevates this above being ‘just a sitcom’. It’s an entry into a wonderful, disgusting, miserable, brilliant universe.

It’s said that the noticeable difference between British and American sitcoms is that US ones feature hopeful and optimistic characters while our native characters are downtrodden by circumstance and life. Richie and Eddie are British sitcom underdogs ratcheted up to the nth degree; when they enter our lives there is an air of hopefulness, the aching possibility that a shag could be just around the corner – all they need is a leg up to get a leg over, either in the form of pheromone sex spray or just getting the birds drunk.

‘When Rik and Ade invented these two absurd, endlessly bickering characters living this half-submerged life in a sort of sleazy world of nothingness, it was Rik and Ade at their best.’5

Ben Elton, Rik Mayall: Lord of Misrule

Each episode sees them optimistic about improving their lot through luck or a scheme to engineer a shortcut to their goal, be it lying about being aristocracy, stealing their neighbour’s gas, betting their dole money on a beauty contest or attempting to out-manoeuvre Death himself. Any sense of hope is dashed and any chance of winning evaporates as the rug gets pulled by the script and by sitcom convention. Ultimately for us Brits, it’s not only funnier to see the underdog scuppered but it’s what we expect and is therefore more satisfying. If our heroes sail off into the sunset happy then how will they be here next week to continue their miserable existences that amuse us so?

‘It had an unreality, that was absolutely what Rik and Ade were about; an absurd unreality of two idiots who could never really compete in the real world.’6

Jon Plowman, Rik Mayall: Lord of Misrule

Like many sitcom characters before them that aspire to middle-class respectability, these two utter losers dress in a manner attempting to leave their underclass setting behind, with suits, shirts and ties (held in place with tie pin), yet are essentially juveniles in adults’ bodies. Their costumes have become as recognisable and synonymous with the show as the slapstick violence and cartoon sound effects. Eddie’s brown suit, glasses and hat matched with Richie’s jeans, complete with belt pulled up too far over a white shirt, have become the fancy-dress option of choice for fans raiding charity shops. Following in the best traditions of Tony Hancock, Rupert Rigsby and Basil Fawlty, Richie and Eddie dress for the class and lives they aspire to. Yet they exist on a lower social rung; the perennial Conservative voters who will not only never earn enough to benefit from the tax cuts for the rich those in power push through, but actively suffer from the swingeing cuts a Tory government metes out, like turkeys voting for Christmas. Rik described them as ‘unemployed survivors’,7 though you could go further and add ‘unemployable’ with Richie showing no signs of ever working and, according to Richie in the pilot, ‘Contest’, Eddie’s only ever held down one job for ten minutes: ‘Bunny Girl.’

Despite their outward appearance of respectability, the grime and grot of 11 Mafeking Parade confirms their real economic status: the fridge is usually either empty or contains poisonous food long past edible, the debts and bills are always unpaid to the point that utilities have to be stolen from the neighbours, while their income consists of state support supplemented by petty crime. Conversely, any money that does come in is squandered immediately on the small pleasures to get them through their miserable lives: booze, junk food, gambling and the pursuit of sex. Perhaps this is why, despite the forays into cartoon violence, so many people identify with Richie and Eddie, as they’re actually depressingly representative of the post school/university life of many working-class and lower-middle-class people forced to survive under a Tory government in the late twentieth century (and beyond).

Bottom perfectly fused this hopeless sense of ennui with the best live-action violence the screen has seen outside of cartoons. While Rik and Ade built on the foundation laid by slapstick legends like Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel and Hardy, it’s telling that no act in the three decades since has come close to eclipsing – or even emulating – Rik and Ade’s physical comedy. No one in TV or film matches the sense of excitement, inventiveness and sheer danger that sees Rik facing down a fireball, Ade smashing through windows or the pair taking each other on in epic fights with a variety of household objects as weapons. Too often overlooked and dismissed as ‘just toilet humour’, Bottom is perfectly crafted, brilliantly written, wonderfully performed and … well, something that comes along once in every lifetime. For Rik and Ade, it came twice (OO-ER).

‘The writing was very precise. We’d spend a week rehearsing, with some level of improvisation, so by the time we got to the studio it was very precise. When we walked into the studio we knew exactly what we were doing. It’s a huge privilege to work on something that you would watch on television anyway, and that’s what happened to me with Bottom. It was a huge privilege to work with Rik and Ade.’

Ed Bye, Bottom: Exposed

To us, The Young Ones is absolutely faultless, but it is how Rik and Ade set out, blazing a new path to glory. What followed in Bottom is their undeniable masterpiece.

Series One, Episode One Bottom Smells

Richard Richard

Rik Mayall

Edward Hitler

Adrian Edmondson

Dick Head

Lee Cornes

Mr Sex

Kevin McNally

Jenny

Carla Mendonça

Kate

Cindy Shelley

Woman in Bar

Harriet Thorpe

Woman’s Husband

Clive Mantle

Bottom Compacted

Desperate to pull some birds, Eddie suggests ‘sly, old, foxy stoat’ Richie place an ad in their local paper’s lonely-hearts column when they spy an advert for a revolutionary new sex spray that will make them irresistible to females (species unspecified). The ‘men of science!’ head to the local sex shop and buy a can each to spray liberally about their person (mostly, their genitalia). After a frustration-fuelled fight, and biro-ing on some chest hair, Richie and Eddie don their best outfits and head to the pub only to discover that pheromones are useless if your chat-up lines are pathetic. Well, it’s either that or there really are ‘blasted lesbians everywhere’.

Bottom Inspection

The first episode of Bottom – ‘Smells’ – was unleashed on BBC Two at 9 p.m. on Tuesday 17 September 1991. It arrived with a gloriously filthy mix of absurdity and mundanity, introduced by a BBC announcer promising, ‘A well-rounded display of bare-faced cheek.’

Laden with the whiff of desperation, the stench of Swarfega-soaked underpants and the reek of inadequacy, ‘Smells’ was the perfect introduction to ‘sad old gits’ Richie and Eddie; a new double act that built upon the palpable chemistry Rik and Ade had honed as co-performers. Fans were guaranteed to take these characters eagerly to their bosom, unlike any sane woman Richie and Eddie attempted to woo with their outdated, sexist, homophobic and perverted view of the world.

Richie and Eddie are vile characters and yet a compelling likeability never wavers for the audience watching their often grotesque, always hilarious, escapades. A warmth and familiarity is brought to the pair by Rik and Ade’s performances. They had, by their own admission in several interviews, spent years playing the same characters in various guises in The Dangerous Brothers, The Young Ones and Filthy Rich & Catflap.

The audience’s familiarity with Rik and Ade’s act helps sell the disgusting duo’s desperate behaviour as movingly pitiful, almost playful, rather than abhorrent. They went further than the recognisable ‘love-to-hate’ relationship that is established in British comedy.

But not every first-time viewer appreciated the genius in ‘Smells’. Reactions from newspapers and critics veered between grudging praise and sneering condescension, with many ignoring the razor-sharp writing and focusing on bodily fluids, violence and the immaturity of the characters, ignorantly conflating them with the actors who play them. Many made obvious The Young Ones comparisons while the more astute noted Hancock similarities. Several really sharpened their knives, mortally offended at the filth they felt they had endured.

‘Bottom began on Tuesday and will go on for five more weeks because I can see no way of stopping it short of another Gulf War shoving it out of the schedules, and we are unlikely to get that lucky … Imagine The Three Stooges without the sophistication. Try not to imagine what it’s like inside Mayall and Edmondson’s head.’1

Mail on Sunday, 22 September 1991

‘Bottom is the kind of thing that gives lavatorial humour a bad name.’2

Observer, 22 September 1991

There were some kind words, however, often riding the coat tails of disgust, as though no critic wanted to offer praise without tempering it. Cowards.

‘The jokes were as putrid and puerile as ever … At the end of a decade of professional humour, Mayall and Edmondson are as immature as they were at its start. Bottom has no socially redeeming features. And I laughed like a drain for the full half hour it was on.’3

Sunday Express, 22 September 1991

‘In half an hour, we had vomit, dildos, flavoured condoms, glued-on underpants and shaved tongues, as the pair assiduously scraped the bottom with both barrels. It was an entertainment of deplorably low preoccupations, yet, on the whole, extremely effective … Having personally always resisted the minuscule comic appeal of Edmondson, I was surprised by how much I like him in Bottom. His line about eating the lard – “I’m hungry, but I’m too drunk to cook” – was delivered so brilliantly that I laughed for ages.’4

Evening Standard, 18 September 1991

They missed the point. The brilliance of the new sitcom, Bottom, was that the situation was intended to be the most foul and the comedy beyond absurd. Crucially, throughout the show, the bleakness of Richie and Eddie’s circumstances is counteracted (with rib-tickling results) by the characters’ eternal optimism. When that fails – ironically enough – they use violence to resolve most conflicts.

While the reaction from the critics was, to say the least, mixed, one did grudgingly acknowledge its burgeoning popularity through the first series, though the admission of audience approval was laced with vitriol.

‘They tell me that the disgusting Bottom has proved a big hit in our public schools this term. That indicates, I fear, that the national decline in educational standards has spread throughout the system … It may, in some quarters, be holding oneself up to ridicule to make a fuss about a mere half-an-hour a week of sexual innuendo, violence and a preoccupation with the anal, but are we not expected to take seriously a programme devised by its two main players, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson? They, after all, are taken seriously enough by the entertainment establishment to be chosen to play in one of the modern classics, Waiting for Godot, in the West End. How long, I wonder, before Bottom appears as a significant text in some exam paper for students of Eng. Lit?’5

Daily Mail, 30 October 1991

Yes! How much longer must we wait for Bottom to enter the national curriculum? Never mind, dear discerning reader, we’ve studied it for you. Let’s explore first impressions of the characters if we base them solely on appearances, i.e. their costumes. They don’t immediately marry up to the wretched pair of unemployable losers lying at the bottom of the heap that we’ll come to understand. Whereas The Young Ones firmly placed the geeky would-be anarchist Rick and brash punk Vyvyan in the 1980s, Richie and Eddie’s outfits have a timeless quality to them given that nineties fashion (or lack thereof) would have aged the show more hideously than its occasional dated references to celebrities and politicians.

Richie dresses smartly in a clean trench coat while Eddie’s brown trilby hat tops off a thick woollen overcoat. It gives their characters an inherently British appearance that is somewhat respectable to the outsider. Brown and grey are the prominent colours; there’s no brightness to be found in their drab silhouettes. Distinctly masculine, both wearing shirts and ties – Richie’s complete with a shiny tie clip while Eddie’s tale-tellingly splays out in slobby disarray – each nods to the aspiration of the middle classes for whom capitalism has been a success. Even though Richie is keener to appear ‘better’ than others, he wears jeans. They are the giveaway that he’s very much working class, very much a slob and very much lower down the ranks than he sees himself.

The next thing that eagle-eyed over-analysers will notice after the actors’ appearance is the location … it’s a shithole. A dimly lit, squalid flat with filth on the walls, the set looks extremely well lived-in. You can tell it’s just the two of them living there, so the grime belongs to these two human pustules who never clean.

It’s never overtly explained but there’s a heavy implication that Richie comes from a family that once belonged to the upper echelons of society or, at the very least, they once had money. His aunt Mabel is revealed to own the London flat he and Eddie share, while in ‘Apocalypse’ (series one, episode four), another aunt (Olga) dies and leaves him an inheritance he’s long been waiting for (but at £600, it is far from a fortune). Eddie pays rent to Richie – or is supposed to, as we hear in the original pilot episode ‘Contest’ (series one, episode three). Presumably, this money is how Richie’s supposed to sustain himself, as he has never worked a day in his life. He’s the ‘housewife’ of the pair, the one who stays home folding underpants and cooking the meals, including the ‘Friday night fry-up’. Although, judging by the state of the flat, he rarely scrubs away at anything (beyond giving his own penis a good polish).

They live on the lower rungs of society but they do at least own a suit each – we see Richie in much smarter trousers and braces later on in the episode – and these are the outfits they choose to impress women when out ‘on the pull’. It’s later explained that each character is wearing the only outfit he owns. In the wrong actors’ hands this fact could be desperately upsetting but, thanks to Rik and Ade’s talent for writing and performing, we accept Richie and Eddie as a disgusting pair for whom we are to have limited sympathy. Much like Albert and Harold in the classic sitcom Steptoe and Son, they are a filthy duo just about managing to scrape through existence, trapped with each other through necessity and, deep down, love.

Richie and Eddie never wash, their living conditions are grotty and they struggle with body odour (Richie mocks Eddie’s BO at the top of ‘Contest’ and, in series three, episode one, ‘Hole’, Eddie attacks Richie’s musky smell, eliciting a retaliation that nearly blasts Eddie off the Ferris wheel). This episode is called ‘Smells’ for more than the double entendre. They both stink, physically and figuratively speaking. They are the sort of drunken, lecherous creatures you would give a wide berth if you encountered them in real life. Yet, in the land of sitcom, we are drawn into their depressing world-view. We enjoy laughing at their attempts to triumph when we know only misfortune will be ultimately served to them. We relish their trials and tribulations because they aren’t happening to us. There’s always hope but it’s repeatedly dashed. British comedy thrives when its characters are at their most despairing; failing to win as a result of their own shortcomings. Painful recognition makes us laugh, and we delight in the knowledge that we are not alone. If we dare to admit it, we are all capable of being a bit like Richie and Eddie sometimes.

‘Smells’ opens to a backdrop of a rain-soaked window opposite the front door as Richie and Eddie return to their squalid flat. Immediately, it’s established that they’ve had an unsuccessful night attempting to seduce women and Richie is lamenting their failure. Pre the dawn of the ‘unsolicited dick pic’, we discover Richie and Eddie’s main ploy has been to draw the ladies’ attention to their todgers. Richie cunningly attempted to make his wad look bigger by stuffing toilet paper down the front of his trousers. Meanwhile, Eddie performed his party trick of shoving a bottle of Vimto down the front of his pants, earning a kick in the knackers and a ‘free’ drink in the face. Which, to Eddie, is considered a result.

As with all great sitcom characters, the audience is quickly given a clear understanding of their desires and their comedy conceit. Richie wants a woman to have sex with him but he’s hopelessly unable to charm any ladies because of his desperation. Richie’s quickly established as a virgin, bemoaning the fact as he declares that he wants to have sex just once to ‘see what it’s like’, before openly perving on a couple kissing in the opposite flat through the kitchen window. However, Richie can’t even achieve a simple act of voyeurism, as they spot him and close the curtains. We later witness that his inability to admit that he’s nervous when talking to women leads to a crass approach combined with his woeful lack of social awareness.

Eddie meanwhile is similarly inclined – he wants to have it off with women but he has had some success in the past. Now, usually far too inebriated to see through any of his plans to cop off with a woman, he turns to the bottle instead. (To drink alcohol, we mean, not give the birds his impression of the Eiffel Tower.) In this opening episode, Eddie’s focus is on his other base urge: drinking dangerous amounts of booze. Eddie’s alcoholism is seeded from the off, drawing big laughs as he has the ‘fantastic idea’ to drink his pint. Later, his penchant for substance abuse is made starkly clear when he ingests the entire bottle of pheromone sex spray. In ‘Smells’, it isn’t stated whether Eddie’s sexual history is full of conquests or not. It appears that, although he’d like to pull a bird just as much as Richie, he is more preoccupied with his stomach (the third of his base urges, alongside sex and booze). Thus, he eats lard raw because he’s ‘hungry but too drunk to cook’. As a sidenote, Ade actually ate real lard for the kitchen scene. Method acting at its finest. ‘You couldn’t really fake it, could you?’ Ade told the Guardian in 2017.6

As Richie declares how depressed he is, Eddie tries comforting him, insisting there’s ‘loads of ugly birds in the world’ and that one of them is ‘bound to sleep with him’ eventually. (‘Nil desperandum!’) Richie and Eddie’s outlook is that of adolescents in adults’ bodies; man-children who haven’t mentally developed beyond their teenage years. They still obsess about women as objects they so eagerly want to attain but have no idea how to go about it without the aid of a sex spray or barefaced lying about themselves. Eddie suggests brutal honesty for their ad in the lonely-hearts column, but Richie’s imagination runs wild as he conjures a wildly egotistical description of himself rather than admitting he’s desperate for human contact. Tellingly, the idea of finding a ‘widow’ is desirable to Richie, who licks his lips at the very word, believing he could exploit her vulnerability. It would be vile if you broke down the psychology in the real world, but plays to a huge laugh on-screen thanks to Rik’s portrayal. They are absurd characters yet there is a truth to their behaviour, grounded in the lowest depths of humanity.

Lonely-hearts columns, ‘wonder drug’ sex sprays and the fact a Coca-Cola costs eighty pence sets the show firmly in nineties Britain. The sex-shop scene especially stands out as a perfect summation of Richie and Eddie’s arrested sexual development. The set itself is a deliciously seedy backdrop, cutting to the very crux of Richie and Eddie’s – aka most teenage boys’ – desires and fears. The scene plays out to a deeply satisfying, cringeworthy crescendo for the audience. We witness the pair’s unquenchable lust, nervous desperation to explore their sexuality and their apparent unfamiliarity with sex toys – ‘We are men of science!’ – to gloriously humorous effect.

The sleazy scenery is counterbalanced by the very British trope of crippling embarrassment when it comes to discussing your sex life in any detail (let alone revealing the utter lack of sex Richie and Eddie get). While Eddie cracks a terrible joke to try and mask his anxiety, Richie hangs at the door like a creepy schoolboy egging Eddie on. Richie desperately wants to be seen as a man of the world, but his illusion is spectacularly shattered as he ultimately confirms to the sarcastic shopkeeper that he’s inadequate in every way. Legendary British character actor Kevin McNally played the acerbic Mr Sex (the shopkeeper) and told us during his podcast interview that he knew at the time that Bottom was going to be a hit.

‘There was an atmosphere the night we recorded it and the audience really went for it. I thought “this is a runner and this is really gonna go”. By the time they started Bottom, they were masters of their craft.’7

Kevin McNally, Talking Bottom podcast (2021)

McNally’s appearance was brief but memorable. He revealed that one of the most cherished things in his performance was that it guaranteed he will forever hear from strangers, at any given moment, that they would ‘rather have a pineapple violently inserted into their rectum’.

Regardless of their embarrassment, Richie and Eddie scarper with the sex spray – trailing a ludicrously kinky leather harness – in what is a rare mini-victory for the perverted duo. They have the bottles in their hot, sweaty hands and surely nothing can go wrong?

Confidently preparing for a big night on the pull, the cartoonish vision of their lives unfolds in front of the bathroom mirror, Eddie shaving his tongue while Richie draws himself chest hairs with a green biro as he ‘used up all the black’ on his legs. In this caricatured world of violence, pliers are used in place of tweezers for plucking out a single nose hair. Clamping down on Richie’s septum with apparent well-meaning intent, Eddie comes to blows with his pal, and a spectacularly choreographed fight in the confined space ensues. Comedy props include the mirrored bathroom cabinet and toilet seat, quite literally bringing toilet humour to our screens in this fine-tuned fight sequence. This scene withstands repeated viewing; fans can watch time and time again and still laugh as heartily – and wince as genuinely – as the first time they saw it.

Richie and Eddie’s blissful ignorance of the inappropriateness of their behaviour is what sells their characters to the audience. Blinded by his own thirst for sex, Richie makes a move on a woman (Harriet Thorpe) by the bar only to be warned off by her husband (Clive Mantle). She assumes Richie has mental health problems, which is a damning and tragic insight into how Richie and Eddie are viewed by those in the ‘real world’, even within the absurd universe Rik and Ade create in Bottom.

Unperturbed by this setback, we witness Richie and Eddie’s first encounter with sneering pub landlord Dick Head (Lee Cornes). He’s indifferent to the pair’s usual order of ‘two halves of mild in pint glasses’. This single line lets us know Richie and Eddie are skint but try to keep up appearances. They may be at the bottom of the heap, but they desperately aspire to be in a social stratum above their own.

The grotty boozer the Lamb and Flag is a wonderfully preposterous venue to try and meet women – the local ‘old man’ pub in all its fading glory. You can almost smell the dank sweat mixed with the stale beer in the drip trays and stubbed-out fag ends. It’s astounding that two women are choosing this pub for a night out but perhaps, being lesbians, this is where they go to be undisturbed.

Richie’s body language is suitably needy; he almost pounces on them – seemingly unaware of the rude interruption – and makes some woefully awkward attempts at conversation. Rik Mayall gives a masterclass in nervous acting; and all hail the beginnings of Richie’s immortal chat-up line: ‘That’s a smashing blouse you have on.’ Now considered by many fans to be Richie’s ‘catchphrase’, it was destined to be honed and repeated even if Rik and Ade were unaware of its future genius at the time they penned ‘Smells’.

In this episode, the genesis of Richie’s pickup tactic is his comment on Kate’s ‘lovely blouse’. While the lads are on the pull, let’s take a moment to overanalyse the later development of the phrase to ‘smashing blouse’ in series two, episode one, ‘Digger’. It’s a great comedy line for many reasons and it deserves celebrating as it sums up Richie’s character conceit as to why he’s so hopeless with the ladies. Richie cannot pull women because he doesn’t know how to talk to them. Perhaps he’s received the tip to ‘compliment a woman’ from advice he’s read in a magazine or heard on the telly. ‘Lovely’ is a feminine adjective but it is a description that remains current. Rik and Ade’s later scripting of ‘smashing’ goes one further in showing Richie to be lacking awareness of modern social norms. An inherently British word, commonly exclaimed by annoying characters in stories like The Famous Five, it is far from what could be considered a seductive choice. Richie may as well be ‘friend-zoning’ himself from the moment he opens his lips. Similarly, the word ‘blouse’, even in the nineties, was quite literally old-fashioned. It’s an extremely unflattering garment but, of course, the heart of the joke is that neither woman in the scene is actually wearing an item you would describe as a blouse. You don’t have to delve much further to realise it’s a rehearsed line that Richie can’t veer from because of his anxiety. Indeed, in series two’s ‘Digger’ Richie’s nerves let him down as he comments on Lady Natasha’s smashing blouse only to be informed that she’s wearing a dress.

As a ‘chat-up’ line it is inherently feeble in its apparent intent. We know Richie wants to have sex but he’s incapable of hinting this with a more traditional chat-up line that comments on the female form. It’s strangely endearing that he chooses to notice their clothing; it’s unthreatening, and one could conclude that, especially in the 1990s, it might have been considered effeminate. Richie is too hopeless, too polite and too pathetic to reveal that what he is really after lies underneath the garment.

Their portrayal as little more than sniggering teenage boys is never more perfect than when the duo buy condoms from the vending machine in the gents’ toilet before they are anywhere near having sex with either woman. The gag count rises through the roof as they decide on flavour, size and to ‘get two’ rather than share one. After a beating from Clive Mantle and the chance to fill their pockets with condoms they’ll never use, Eddie again turns to substance abuse as he decides to empty the rest of the pheromone spray into his mouth and is sent high by the chemicals.

Finding that ‘their birds’ have moved tables, Richie and Eddie of course fail to take the hint and, ultimately, the girls declare that they are lesbians in order to get rid of them. We are never quite sure if this is genuinely true but Richie accepts it as fact. It’s a clever callback to the opening lines of the episode and, as Richie hears this so often, he’s had time to think of an answer to what he perceives as his only obstacle; he offers to ‘cure them’. Richie’s unawareness of how offensive this suggestion is carries the line, as is the case with so many of Richie and Eddie’s insults. We understand that Richie’s determination (desperation) to not let anything get in the way of him and a chance to lose his virginity knows no bounds, but with these tactics he is doomed to failure.

As the women walk out in disgust, a drug-addled Eddie tries to have it off with a chair before he sets eyes on Richie. You get the feeling it isn’t the first time it’s happened as Richie resorts to their default resolution – violence – to avert Eddie’s advances. The freeze-frame ending in this, and subsequent episodes, brings an extra layer of cartoon humour to the ferocity of the impact. As must happen in all traditional sitcoms, the characters return to the status quo of their existence in the closing moments. Ending on the still image helps signal that there will be a reset and we, the audience, cannot wait for the next instalment.

Bottom Nuggets

❏ ‘Smells’ aired first but the real pilot episode, ‘Contest’ (episode three), had been written and filmed by Rik and Ade before the rest of the series was commissioned. Once all six episodes of the series had been shot, Ed, Rik and Ade decided ‘Smells’ was a better opener.

‘[What] quite often happens with pilots is by the time you’ve done your series, your pilot is not as good as the other shows. Not because it’s not as good … it’s because it was the first one made and you’ve learned a lot more with the others. We thought that “Smells” would work best as the first episode. We steered it that way deliberately and then put “Contest” further down.’

Ed Bye, Talking Bottom podcast (2019)

❏ Bottom’s iconic theme tune is credited to the Bum Notes, a jazz ensemble featuring Adrian Edmondson. The opening tune is a cover of ‘BB’s Blues’ by American blues/jazz singer B. B. King, and the closing tune is a cover of ‘Last Night’ by the Mar-Keys. The Bum Notes performed every musical sting used in the episodes.

❏ Once filming ‘Smells’ was complete, Rik and Ade then recorded the famous dancing end-credit sequence in the studio. Having just performed as ‘Mr Sex’, Kevin stayed and watched the pair improvise their dancing and nail it in two takes.

‘I was waiting to have a pint with them and I was blown away by the balletic shadow dance they did.’

Kevin McNally, Talking Bottom podcast (2021)

❏ The original script for ‘Smells’ opens with Richie and Eddie in the back of a taxi. While Richie racially abuses the clearly white, English driver, they discuss their desire to ‘get a shag’ and shout out of the window to women in a passing car. The scene culminates in a stunt that would’ve seen Eddie clinging onto the roof of the cab before being thrown off as it veers around a corner. This scene was cut from subsequent drafts, with the episode instead opening with the pair entering the flat.

❏ When shooting the opening credits in June 1991, the original idea from director Ed Bye was to just have the shot zooming out from Rik and Ade at the display window at the then-unfinished Hammersmith Broadway shopping centre, but on reviewing the shot on location, Ade was worried it wouldn’t be enough. So he and Rik improvised the now iconic sequence on the bench in the middle of traffic on Hammersmith Broadway.

‘We got the shot of them at the window and Ade said, “Is that going to be enough? Let’s cover, just in case.” So I set the camera up across the road and he said, “We’ll think of something, just film.” The bizarre bit was when a bus goes past and Rik disappears. That was for real. I had no idea he was going to do that.’

Ed Bye, Talking Bottom podcast (2019)

❏ In December 2020, Adrian Edmondson tweeted that he had just discovered Bottom’s episode titles were changed for the BBC Accounts Dept in order to ‘spare their blushes’ over the ‘filthy double entendres’. They were replaced with alternative quotes from the show. ‘Smells’ was renamed ‘Buying Condoms’. Others were renamed Bottom: ‘Hunting Expedition’, ‘The Furry Honeypot Adventure’ and ‘Finger Fun’.8 Still sound pretty saucy if you ask us!

Series One, Episode Two Bottom Gas

Richard Richard

Rik Mayall

Edward Hitler

Adrian Edmondson

The Gas Man

Mark Lambert

Mr Rottweiler

Brian Glover

Lolly

Gabi Valenti

Bottom Compacted

Richie and Eddie have the heating on full blast as they attempt to cheat each other at poker. Then, they get a visit from someone unexpected. It’s the GAS MAN! Turns out the criminally inept pair have been stealing next door’s gas supply and there’s only one thing for it: stop this innocent worker uncovering the truth by any means necessary, i.e. telling him a long story about a pair of trousers called Dave. After violently beating him unconscious, Richie and Eddie debate sexual assault, cannibalism and sending the body ‘bus surfing’ before their defenceless victim awakes and escapes with his life. Now, all Eddie and Richie have to do is break into Mr Rottweiler’s flat and remove the evidence without waking him or his new bird. So long as they don’t get distracted, surely the plan to cover their tracks won’t badly blow up in their faces …

Bottom Inspection

The episode opens with a close-up of a grotty old gas heater. The shot pulls back to reveal the heater is surrounded by dozens of spent matches, the gas rings on the cooker are burning at full power and a toasty Richie and Eddie are sitting opposite each other at the dinner table playing poker. The low rumble of the burning flames emphasise the feeling of warmth in the flat while Richie and Eddie clutch their cards and eye each other intensely. The tone is one of a serious, adult, high-stakes poker game with everything on the line. This setting is immediately, deliberately and hilariously undercut by Richie’s opening gambit: ‘Right, I’ll bet another week’s worth of washing-up.’ Like the skint man-children they are, these characters are playing for forfeits, from basic domestic tasks (a week’s worth of washing-up and four trips to the launderette), to downright horrendous household chores (‘one cleaning and disinfecting right around the back of the lavatory bowl’). Cash is also laid on the line, but only in miniscule sums (‘3p in real money’). Mere seconds into the episode, a very vivid picture of their lives is being painted clearly. Their poker game is so revealing of their attitude to life – not just the childish stakes being gambled but their approaches to the game. Richie neither understands the rules nor wishes to play fairly, declaring himself to have ‘three pairs’, then hiding the card and downgrading it to ‘two and a half pairs’ when challenged. He retrieves most of the deck from his chair, shoes and underpants – the result of squirreling them away. Eddie understands the game but is just as dishonest and relies on Richie’s ignorance as he slams down ‘five kings’ on the table and scoops up his winnings, including a picture of Richie’s long-term crush, BBC newsreader Sue Carpenter.

Their cosy evening is interrupted by the buzzing of the doorbell, revealed to be the gas man – whose appearance sends Richie into insane panic, shouting, ‘Hello, Mr Gas Man!’ continually to alert Eddie to his presence. Slow on the uptake, Eddie is oblivious until Richie takes to simply yelling, ‘Gas Man! Gas Man! Gas Man!’ Realisation finally sinks into Eddie’s addled brain and he leaps to action. The pair have a dodgy pipe set-up to steal the neighbour’s gas supply and save themselves some cash. Eddie frantically hides the evidence as Richie reluctantly guides the gas man in. He’s perfectly played by Mark Lambert, a character actor known for appearances in Cracker, Casualty, Sharpe and The Young Ones. He originally met Rik and Ade at Manchester University, studying drama and impressed them with his comedy chops.

‘I was a year above Rik and Ade … I had a revue company called Daft Turnip and Rik and Ade actually were hugely in awe of our company … We were just pre all that stuff up in Edinburgh … We were way too pure for that, which was a shame but we did a lot of experimental comedy revue.’

Mark Lambert, Talking Bottom podcast (2021)

The ‘Gas Man!’ moment is noteworthy as an example of where Rik and Ade’s performances elevate the jokes on the page. On paper, yelling the same two words over and over doesn’t seem particularly funny, yet Rik’s energy coupled with Ade’s brilliant ignorance followed by scrambling to action, creates one of Bottom’s standout moments and a scene often used to represent the show as a whole. Mark Lambert remains proud of his inescapable contribution, adding: ‘I might’ve walked off a stage playing King Lear, I might’ve got my Olivier nominations but, boy, the amount of times people have gone “Are you the gas man?”’

With the gas man there to read their meter and, terrified their scheme is to be rumbled, the pair do their best to obstruct him but fail to stop him finding it. Despite the clear guilt they exhibit, the innocent and trusting gas man swallows their story that they don’t actually use gas when he sees their meter reading is 0000000. Even the pilot light being aflame is excused by Richie as having ‘caught fire’ as he quickly blows it out. The stakes get raised as the gas man reveals he’ll be checking the neighbour’s meter next, if he doesn’t finish his shift first – which ends in fifteen minutes. Knowing he’ll discover their illegal pipe set-up next door, the pair play for time in the hope of running out his shift. That will give them the whole night to cover their tracks before he returns in the morning.

What better way for Brits to kill time than a cup of tea? Under the threat of a cricket bat held aloft by Eddie and gradually realising that the pair may not be entirely harmless, the gas man agrees to stay rather than risk provoking the oddball couple. Only Richie and Eddie have hilariously handicapped the process through not being able to use any gas to make the tea. Three cups of steaming cold tea are promptly served, with Richie and the gas man going through the grim charade of drinking and pretending to enjoy theirs, tea leaves and all. Finally at the end of his tether, the hapless gas man makes to leave and a panicking Richie punches him in the face, joined by Eddie, who expertly twats him round the head with a frying pan while he’s still falling to the floor. The pair pummel him with fists and frying pan for a good thirty-plus strikes in one of Bottom