Adrian Edmondson writes about the end of their partnership in his memoirs

Adrian Edmondson says he knew he could no longer work with Rik Mayall once his double act partner started totting up who had the most jokes in their stage shows.

In his new memoirs, the comedian talks about how their groundbreaking comedy alliance, which began at university hit problems when Mayall’s ego got in the way of the comedy.

He also reveals how his partner’s drinking affected their work – as well as speaking movingly about how Mayall’s death in 2014, at the age of just 56, affected him profoundly. 

In an extract from his forthcoming book published in the Daily Mail, Edmondson told how the pair’s drinking got out of control on their first theatrical tour of Bottom in 1993, hitting the booze every night to celebrate ‘the sheer joy of conquering the panic’.

But he added: ‘It turns out, in the long run, that Rik isn't very good at drinking. As students, we couldn't afford more than four pints of cheap lager of an evening, and four pints made Rik amiable and fun to be with. But now we're earning good money, we can drink as much as we like, of anything, even spirits, and half a bottle of Scotch makes Rik, by turns, belligerent, morose, and then unconscious. It's no fun for either of us.’

The issue became worse while writing the second Bottom tour in 1995, when Edmondson recalls spotting him nipping into the pub opposite their office  before they start writing. 

‘I eventually challenge him,’ the comic writes. ‘We finally have a friendly, truthful and rather tearful discussion. Rik doesn't appear for a week, and when he finally returns he says he's come to accept that he has a problem with booze.

‘So from the second tour onwards Rik doesn't drink at all, and to make it easier for him, and because drinking alone is a bit sad, I stop drinking too.’

However, Edmonson says a different problem emerged when on tour, when Mayall starts to think that the crowd are laughing not because his character Richie is funny,  but because he ‘is a comic god’. So his partner starts to ‘cut huge sections of carefully written jokes’ and starts playing up to his ‘sex god’ status on stage  – entirely at odds to the virgin loser is his supposed to be playing – to diminishing returns.

‘He starts being more Rik than Richie,’ Edmondson writes. ‘Unfortunately, Rik the comic god isn't quite as funny as the character. The character is humble, nervous, insecure, scared and desperate. Rik isn’t.

‘It's hard to explain the difference between a good laugh and a diminishing laugh. The audience will not be aware of it, but all comedians will occasionally come off stage saying: "What a shit audience." But once you start thinking the audience are shit every night, you're in trouble.

‘There's always a point a few weeks into every tour when he'll say: "None of the stuff I have is funny, let's cut all my lines." And I'll try to point out that if he stayed in character the laughs might come back.’

Edmondson says at the end of the 2003 tour he came to the conclusion: 'I don't want to do this again.'

He added ‘Rik never gets his head around my decision to quit. For the next decade, whenever I ring him up to suggest we have lunch, just to chew the fat, just to be friends rather than colleagues, he always assumes I want to get the act back together again. ‘

Eventually he had an idea: write an episode of show that he didn’t think would ever get commissioned, so ‘now it will be the BBC's fault that we are no longer a double act, not mine’.

Yet to his surprise the broadcaster ordered Hooligan's Island, about their Bottom characters Richie and Eddie marooned on a desert island and based on one of their earlier stage shows, which they start to write in 2012.

But when Edmondson read back what they had written, playing both parts, he noticed Mayall counting things off on his fingers.

When asked what he was doing, Mayall replied: 'I'm counting your jokes and my jokes. And you've got more jokes than me.'

Edmondson his partner was ‘apologetic’ – but did they same thing the next day, then went through the script line by line. 

‘And I realise that the double act is properly over, Edmondson writes: ‘There's no trust left. It was glorious when it was alive, I'm immensely proud of everything we did together, it still makes me laugh, but I'm glad we didn't do a dodgy final series.’

Writing of Mayall’s fatal heart attack Edmondson says: ‘His death is a dreadful shock to the world, and to me. My head fills with a kind of white noise. It's difficult to comprehend that he's dead.’

When considering the same subject on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs yesterday, Edmondson was overcome with emotion when asked about his abiding memories of his long-term professional partner. 

‘I think of the writing room all the time,’ he told host Lauren Lavern. ‘We spent more time in the writers room than anywhere else. And I remember just laughing like drains.’

Audibly choking back tears, he added: ‘His mom wrote me a lovely letter. I wrote to her after he died. And she wrote back saying all she could remember was us… she could see us out in the garden in a couple of deck hairs just laughing and laughing laughing could never tell what was quite so funny. It was funny. It was good fun.’

For the book he would be cast away with, Edmondson chose the script of Waiting For Godot – which he and Mayall performed on the West End stage. 

And for his luxury item he chose a tab of acid, saying that although he has never taken a hallucinogen a friend spoke of how it ‘changed him beneficially and opened the doors to perception’. 

‘Having just written my autobiography and tried to work out who I am, I realised I'm still incredibly confused,’ he said. ‘I’m still floundering around. And I'd love to understand who I am. 

‘The island is the place to do it. Because as I've said, I'm not going to last [on his own survival skills]. So I'll do it. See if I'm there and then expire.’

• Adrian Edmondson's Berserker will be published on September 28. It is available to order from Amazon, priced, £15, or from Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores, below:

Published: 18 Sep 2023