The Essay: Top of the Bill

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The Essay: Top of the Bill: Adrian Edmondson on the pursuit of laughter

Adrian Edmondson on the pursuit of laughter

Top of the Bill

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Top of the Bill, Adrian Edmondson on the pursuit of laughter

Adrian Edmondson remembers a riotous act from the early days of alternative comedy.

Adrian Edmondson remembers how rudeness and silliness made him laugh as a child and how they led to the glorious pursuit of laughter as he began his own comedy career.

In this essay Adrian Edmondson describes his pursuit of a certain type of laugh, a desperate, untamed, visceral laugh, and in doing so remembers one of the acts from those early days of the Comedy Store.  It is one of the funniest things he has ever seen and led to his understanding of what comedy could be. He recalls how the performer played with the audience and their expectations to riotous, hysterical, effect. Except he cannot remember their name.  No, really, he can’t.  

For those who know Adrian Edmondson’s work with his former comedy partner Rik Mayall, it won’t come as a surprise that as a child he was delighted by The Goons and by rude words in comic songs. He went on to study drama at Manchester University. The influence of the absurdist dramatists he studied, and the Muppets and the Pythons, are all reflected in his comedy practice. He and Rik were part of the first wave of Alternative Comedy that changed the comedic landscape for ever. He starred as Vyvyan in The Young Ones, the series that blasted its way onto our screens, tearing into our preconceptions of what television comedy could be. He co-created and wrote the television series Bottom with Rik, which ran for three very successful series, toured as a stage show and was the basis for a spin-off film. Adrian Edmondson is now equally well known as an accomplished straight actor (in the RSC, BBC TV’s War and Peace, Eastenders), and a writer of books for adults and children.

Written and read by Adrian Edmondson
Produced by Caroline Raphael for Dora Productions

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