Adrian Edmondson: Back to Normal

Rip It Up, Issue 109, 1 August 1986, Page 18

Adrian Edmondson: Back to Normal

Vyv of ‘The Young Ones’

‘Supergrass’: another mindblowing adventure for Adrian Edmondson.

Adrian Edmonsdon is writing a book for the Christmas market. It’s called How To Be A Complete Bastard. “I just seem to play bastards all the time,” he muses. “So it seemed like a good idea.” Bastards or wimps ... “Yeah — nothing in between.”

The real-life Ade is nothing at all like the inspired bit of nihilism he created for

Vyvyan in The Young Ones Blond, bespectacled and

spreading slightly around the middle, he does not even

look capable of shouting and banging his head against

walls. He’s the quietly articulate type, prone to having a little laugh if he says something that tickles his fancy. Not very metal. “They offered me the chance to do a Vyvyan book and I said I’d rather do this one because I want to kill him off. It was a shame

really to do that single with Cliff Richard because it

brought him out again. He’s such a strong character — he seems to be all I get

interviewed about. And it

must be honestly three or four years since we made the last episode. I think Vyvyan’s great but I don’t want to get stuck. The others seem to quite like doing theirs ...” Vyvyan was a character based on Adrian Dangerous, Ade’s half of a duo with Rik Mayall called the Dangerous Brothers that still resurfaces occasionally. The pair teamed up at university 10 years ago and still tend to write together. The Brothers are no longer a live comic entity, however, and he says he doesn’t misss live work much — he’s much more

interested in learning about making films. The two disciplines come together for a sequel to the original Bad News Tour film, which goes into production very soon. Edmonsdon has written in an appearance on stage at the Castle Donington rock festival,

Adrian Edmonsdon has a keen appreciation of jokes, especially “good jokes" be they visual or verbal. But has the approach to TV comedy changed since, say, the first Bad News? “I suppose it must have done but I can’t see how. We’ve always been very arrogant in dealing with TV companies, so it never really bothers us!” As original TV comedy, The Young Ones and Comic Strip were immediately lined up against Monty Python’s Flying Circus: “Yeah, it’s obvious — it’s just because it was young apd different, as the Pythons were when they first came out. I don’t think we’re anything like them. But I like the Pythons, I grew up with them, I thought they were brilliant.” Their’s was a comedy of ideas, where The Young Ones was a lot more based on people, a comedy observation. “Yeah. The Pythons’ main joke was about middle class people, and our main joke was about... everybody. They were definitely all about suits — or gumbies. We had an advantage in that we started comparatively young, so we were able to play younger people.” Do you get the freedom you want working in TV?

“Yes, I think so. We write what we want to write and we usually seem to get it made. Only on one occasion have we had one stopped, because it was considered too libellous. It was called Back to Normal With Eddie Monsoon. We made a followup to it which was called Eddie Monsoon: A Life. But the first one was slightly more vulgar... (giggles)” How about individual jokes or lines? “We only get troubled with rude words really. But there’s no real need for them — they’re quite nice.” Bottoms Do you ever find yourself having to strike a balance between more adventurous

where the band will play live. “For the Castle Donington thing we’re having to come up with about half an hour of songs and comedy to keep the punters happy — we only need about 10 minutes for filming. And

that’s the sort of thing we’d like to get into as a group, an act, because it’s very good fun and they’re such good jokes in that sort of area.” It becomes clear that

comedy and stuff that’ll get laughs? “Like what?” Like some of the more earthy comedy in The Young Ones. Jokes about... “Bottoms ... bottoms and farts. They’re good jokes, I like them. We generally do whatever we find funny. We don’t write to any kind of formula or anything.” But in a film like Gino (a Comic Strip film unscreened in New Zealand) there was a certain weird element, like a bad dream. “Yeah. Peter [Richardson] writes much more serious films — he doesn’t like gags as much as we do. They’re all funny in a way. The Comic Strip films as a whole aren’t outrageously funny, they're sort of wryly funny.” Morrissey from the Smiths opined in a bout of social commentary that you were trying to do the same sort of ensemble comedy as the Carry On team in the 60s. “Did he? There’s no attempt to be like anyone but I suppose you’ll be compared to any group of comedians if you’re a group of comedians. Carry On films weren’t very funny as a whole. It was all innuendo — a very boring style of humour.” Do you see yourselves as part of any tradition of English humour. “I’m sure we’re very English because we write about what we know about. That’s the problem we’ve had with ideas for feature films. We’ve had quite a few ideas for feature films that never got made because the

people with the money are generally American and they’d say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to set it in LA?’ And we said we don’t know anything about LA. We couldn’t make jokes about LA. We could only make jokes about an English person’s perception of LA, which would only be funny to English people. "I’m of the opinion that British humour is exportable, if you make it distinctly British. If it’s exactly what you find funny, someone else will find it funny. I mean, we find American comedy funny and the Pythons go down well in America and they don’t make any concessions to American money at all. Life of Brian, there’s nothing American

about that and it went down very well over there. They just take a long time to catch up. And apparently

they’re going a bomb on The Young Ones, which they show on MTV. I find that extraordinary, because the field of reference in The Young Ones is so British. I don’t see how they could understand a word Rik says. His jokes are all about English politics and Cliff Richard, who they’ve hardly even heard of in America.” There was a similar problem when New Zealand TV couldn’t pick up The Young Ones for two years because Australian TV wouldn’t have it. “And now Australia have gone a bomb on it, haven’t they? Yeah, and it’s strange the way they carefully select episodes of the Comic Strip to show as well. I can’t see why one is any different from another. The whole beauty of the Comic Strip series is that it’s a series of

entirely different films with the same cast. As individual films they can be good or bad — as a series they get better in comparison to each other. One-offs are stupid.” The Big Screen How did you feel about making the step up from the short films to a cinematic feature? It’s just that much bigger, there’s always the chance of making a real turkey. "Yeah. I think if you make feature films cheap enough ... I mean, films necessarily do have to be a commercial proposition, but the way they’ve gone about that commercial proposition is to pour £4O million and make £9O million, rather than pour in one or two million pounds and make £lO million. And it’s not good for the whole business — it’s not good for anyone who works in the industry and it’s not good for the punters either because they get such a limited field of films. I mean, all the films that come out, all the blockbusters, they’re good films. Your £2.50 is extraordinarily well spent, you don’t feel cheated or anything. But it’s just a shame that more films aren’t seen. You get one film, Rambo, and it stays in the cinema for 10 weeks. It should be there for three or four weeks then let’s show the next film. London’s quite good for that because there’s such a diverse audience that at any one time there’s about 200 films on, which is nice. There’s been a few British films lately which have made a slight impact — My Beautiful Laundrette, Letter to

Brezhnev and Supergrass; they’re all sort of out there and they’re films to go and watch. It’s all become too

important, the film industry.” And Supergrass, through

necessity, was low-budget. “Oh yeah, about one million. But it’s a good way to work. Things like Morons from Outer Space, which they got joint backing on and sent one of the characters to America, which completely ruined the film. It was a complete turkey of a film — it cost about seven million quid and made nothing! We could have made seven films for that money and even if only one of them had hit it would have been a better percentage than they did. And you couldn’t see the money being spent on that film either — it was ludicrous.” Bad News will be your second directorial job — are you happy to carry on acting indefinitely or can you see yourself backing out of it? “Oh no, I love acting. I love acting, writing and directing! I’d prefer not to do them all at the same time ... I’d like to direct someone else’s feature film. I think that would be a great job. But no one will give it to me until I’ve directed enough. And the only way I can get to direct is to direct my own things. But it’s shot on film, so it’s alright — same process.” Do you have any ambitions towards, um, serious creativity? ‘Tve done the odd bit of serious creativity (laughs). I’d like to make more feature films. I think with feature films you get greater scope. Most feature films are funny in a way, they’ve all got jokes in them. It’s just a question of how little you put in.” You work with people like Alexei Sayle, who have very public political beliefs — do your politics have any revelance to your work? “Not directly, no. I mean, we’re all broadly socialist, but we’re not preachers of any sort. You could make the

assumption that our

audience is broadly left-wing as well. And I don’t think you can really be overtly political as a comic — you can behave as a socialist and not make any sexist, racist or Irish jokes. Don’t offend your own morality — which is a political statement in a way.”

You’ve never done anything you’ve regretted, jokewise? “I don’t think so ...” One criticism that could be levelled, particularly against The Young Ones, is the amount of cruelty in the comedy — is it practical to make comedy without cruelty? “Oh yes, I’m sure it is. But there are lots of different jokes; we just happen to like jokes about cruelty. There’s nothing wrong with them — they’re not at all offensive. We like the Roadrunner, Laurel and Hardy ... cartoon violence really. I find violence in films like 48 Hours upsetting and immoral, but I think our violence is always to a comic effect, rather than just to glorifying bloodletting.” Okay, so what's on the agenda for you this year? “I’m going to make another series with Rik. We don’t quite know what about yet, but obviously it’s going to be treated as a follow-up to The Young Ones in some way. But it won’t be anything like The Young Ones. But we want to do another sit-com, of sorts.” And your fave Comic Strip film? “Beat Generation is still my favourite. It’s very well shot. It’s beautiful.” And anything in particular you’d really like to base a comedy around? “Mmmmm ... I’d be giving away ideas then (laughs). I could say something, but it’s such a good idea someone will rip it off!”

Russell Brown