All the grown-ups will say, "But why are the kids crying?" And the kids will say, "Haven't you heard? Rick is dead! The People's Poet is dead!"
And then one particularly sensitive and articulate teenager will say, "Other kids, do you understand nothing? How can Rick be dead when we still have his poems?"
My original intention had been to write a throwaway article about England and the World Cup, which at the time of writing, is just one day away.
But reading all the obituaries to Mayall, I increasingly started to think about how much time in my life had been spent laughing at Mayall (along with co-star Ade Edmondson) and then spent laughing with friends quoting what he had done.
I was perhaps born a generation too late to have really appreciated the anarchic impact his work had on British culture but I regard him a comic genius all the same.
The first time I remember seeing Mayall in anything was when I was off sick from school and finding my older brothers video of The Young Ones. I loved it straight away, it was like a live-action cartoon complete with violence and over the top characters. I even liked Mike. There were jokes that sailed over my young head but it didn't make me love it any less. I was barely aware who Cliff Richard was but I always remembered Rik's poem:
Oh, Cliff,
Sometimes it must feel as if
You Really are a cliff
When fascists try to push you over it
Are they the lemmings?
Or, are you Cliff?
Or, are you Cliff?
Looking back, I can see how much of the episodes were being carried by Rik Mayall. I might not have known what an anarchist was but I liked what the People's Poet was saying.
Then there was the brilliance of Bottom. Dismissed as mindless violence by some, the scripts were actually a lot cleverer than that and the humour more traditional than one would think. Slap-stick has always existed in comedy, what Mayall and Edmondson done was to take it to the extreme. The violence itself was usually kept to a minimum, one big fight per episode, to heighten its comedic impact.
With 95% of all the dialogue across three series being carried by just two people, Mayall and Edmondson somehow created a seemingly vibrant world, often referring to something that had been done by a character who was never seen.
And somehow, the live shows were even better.
In later years, I would discover much of his other work too such as The Comic Strips presents... and Filthy, Rich and Catflap. His turns as Lord Flashheart in Blackadder, easily upstaging Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in every scene he appears. Flash by name, Flash by nature.
He also had other memorable roles in programmes such as Jonathan Creek and Greg Davies's sitcom Man Down (and of course upstages the main star in both).
But arguably his best role was in The New Statesman, when he played fictional Tory MP, Alan B'stard. Tories were said to hate it, commentators said this was only because it was too close to the truth.
Drop Dead Fred was awful, though.
Richard Michael Mayall will be much missed but we'll still have his poems.
And lets make this number one:
