Young Ones Neil: I was injured by a giant chocolate eclair

Nigel Planer reveals on-set injury

comedy Nigel Planer has recalled being injured by a giant chocolate eclair while filming the Young Ones.

He revealed the incident on set of the University Challenge episode while speaking to co-star Adrian Edmondson on his podcast Out To Lunch.

Originally airing in 1984, the episode, entitled Bambi, ends with the pastry crushing the main characters as they sat behind the desk on the set of the long-running quiz show, representing Scumbag College.

But Planer revealed that during rehearsals, the prop came down too early.

He told Edmondson: ‘When we're sitting up, the four of us on that top level… you’re about to kick down through to the level below.

‘Suspended above us was a sort of 20-foot piece of foam, the eclair, which was going to fall on our heads, and there was a point in the script where it would fall and we were all ready, but in the rehearsal, it got released too early…

‘Me being the tallest of the four of us, it landed on and ripped my neck, and I went to the osteopath. They said, "what's happened to you?" and I said, ‘a giant eclair fell on me’.

Edmondson replied: ‘Bet they said, "I think you're in the wrong department. You need to go to the mental health department’.

The gag of the eclair was that it revealed that the entire show had taken place on a microscope slide, until a scientist – played by Robbie Coltrane – dropped the pasty on it, getting it covered in ‘tiny humans’. He then feeds it to an elephant…