LOST ONE:
Rick Mayall is gone & that’s weird. How does a thing like
that happen so early in a life? We were born & raised
just a few miles & a year apart, the first comedian on
tv who spoke like me & the people I grew up with. He made
an accent I used to distain so cool that I ‘came out’,
turned it back on, & could raise a laugh at will
(what a great free gift for a west midlands boy, thank you Rick).
Remember Freur ‘Live in London’ Marquee Club, 1983?
That ‘easy banter’ was straight that had the audience chuckling? –
Rick was part of an important & influential set of comedians
who established a counter balance to what were bitter times if you
happened to live closer to the bread line than you’d dreamed.
They enabled us to laugh through a decade of failed careers,
milk money scavenged from old coats, alienating politics,
miserable times.
There had been belly laughs before, comedians from our parents
generation who had sent ripples through the nation, but Rick &
his peers helped establish a new comedy tribe that belonged to us
& said things publicly that we wished could be said & they did it,
VERY LOUD, on national TV.
In the winter of ’82, freshly signed to CBS records, we took our
first ever aeroplane flight to work with the legendary producer
Conny Plank. We arrived, dressed in rainbow plastic, pearls &
lip gloss, ready for anything, clutching all important VHS tapes
of the Young Ones to make us feel close to home.
Much to the bemusement of his studio crew Conny would end every
working day rolling with laughter as we gathered round the TV to
watch & re-watch every episode. Last year, whilst performing
Edgelands’ with my band in Berlin, I was re-united with Konny’s son,
Stephan, whom I’d last seen as a seven year old boy. Now a giant of
a man full of joy. We were both shocked & delighted to discover that
those tapes of Rick Mayall & his companions, which Conny had
persuaded us to give him had played a significant roll in his
English Language education – ha ha ha – it should be on every
syllabus.
(K)
Karl Hyde 