with love and violence

Do you remember being a teenager? Do you get that innate sense of terror balling in your stomach when you recollect being riddled with hormones and no sense of identity?  Perhaps you've mentally blocked it out, maybe you're wishing you could start it all over from scratch and just make a different set of mistakes, or possibly you're twelve and have stumbled across a blog that's a little too mature for you...  If you are twelve, you're roughly the age I was when I was introduced to the work of Rik Mayall. I'd just started high school and it felt like everyone had a 'thing' and having that 'thing' was an act of survival. Whether it was boy bands or football teams, vampires or werewolves, I was feeling the immense pressure of transferring from an environment where everyone liked one another for playing tag and picking your nose, to one where a hierarchal structure of popularity rooted in how you looked and how you entertained yourself reigned. I tried listening to The Wanted, I tried watching Bridesmaids, I tried playing hockey, and somehow (it's definitely my dad's fault) I landed with The Young Ones...

The Young Ones

I'd dipped my toe a little bit in the comedy pool at this point. I'd watch a decent amount of Monty Python, as a kid I'd loved watching things like Horrible Histories and Miranda. When I watched Demolition, the first episode of The Young Ones, I remember a distinct feeling of not being able to comprehend what I was seeing. It felt like someone had opened up my head, taken out my brain, shook it about, given it a drop kick, a quick slap for good measure, and then stuck it back in. Over the next like six months I watched those twelve episodes back to back, and back to back again, and then back to back some more. My dad, brother and I relentlessly quizzed each other on what quote was from what episode, we knew that show like our lives depended on it. I loved everything about The Young Ones, but I especially loved Rik Mayall. I'd always gravitated towards his character Rick in The Young Ones, as an adult I recognise that this is probably because Rick enacts my dogged desire to change the world that is so often scuppered by my innate people pleasing.

Rick, The Young Ones

The Young Ones will always be my favourite of Rik's work not just out of sentimentality, but because who I am as a person today feels like all roads lead back to The Young Ones (TYOs). I love everything about the 1980s, fashion, music, film - TYOs. I am now a performer and stand up comedian - TYOs. I love props, gore, and telling my story in a multitude of ways - TYOs. I am politically charged and use humour to send and cope with these messages - TYOs. I know, I won't be alone in feeling like this - to ignore Rik Mayall's stamp on the comedy industry would be fucking mental and although I could write you an essay on that, that isn't really what this is about... So, it wasn't long before I owned pretty much everything he'd ever done on DVD and had watched quite literally everything listed under his name on Youtube - I spent pretty much the first two years of high school coming home every day and just watching Rik Mayall. If you'd asked me at the time I would have told you it was because he made me laugh. She's not wrong, but as I reflect a decade later I know it runs a little a deeper than that.

this was always my favourite picture of Rik, I'd never seen it without a watermark until today

When Rik Mayall passed away it felt like my best friend had died. At the time I felt so silly for being so distraught over losing someone I had never met and didn't even know. But it did feel like I'd known him, I'd spent every evening with him for two years. Whilst I was learning so much from The Young Ones and comedy about who I was, I can reflect now and see that I was also going to school every day and learning a pattern of behaviour that I am now going to have to spend a lot of hard work and time undoing: the complex art of putting quite literally everyone else before myself. Through talking, I've recently acknowledged that I have spent very little of the last decade thinking about myself. I think this behaviour has always had a hold on me but its ugly head reared and grew out of control in high school. I tried to always make everyone else around me happy, often sacrificing parts of myself to be the person the people around me needed or wanted in the hope I'd feel less lonely. Of course, it only to amplified the sense of loss and being lost that perpetuated my teenage years. Even as I write this I am concerned at who might read this, how they might interpret it, whilst another slice of me knows it doesn't really matter. Thing is, if you knew me then, I had plenty of mates and you probably recollect a bubbly, outgoing child, but it was so often at a price that I didn't realise would become unbelievably heavy to bear. What's more is, I'm sure if you asked any one of those people I surrounded myself with they were probably battling some internal shitstorm too, like every teenager does, I just hope they had a Rik Mayall in their life.

me dressing as Rick at 14? and then doing a much better attempt at my eighties themed 18th birthday 

Because Rik was always the most effective distraction from all things negative and troubling, and he made me howl with laughter when it felt impossible to conjure up joy. But, he was also a symbol of everything I loved and wanted to be; that which felt absolutely impossible to attempt as a hormonal and insecure teenager. How could someone veer so far from conformity, be sticking their fingers up at everything wrong with society, and still be a national treasure? How could one human possess so much rebellious energy, and was he willing to share? I don’t know if he knew it, but it felt like Rik always gave those qualities to his audience in abundance. Rik's work felt like a light at the end of the tunnel. I put on a uniform and hid behind it every day at school, but at 4 o'clock I got to come home, turn on the DVD player and thrash around to eighties music and laugh at puppet rats, vomit, and Thatcher (corporate wants you to spot the difference between these things, they're the same thing), and it felt AMAZING. In the most fundamental years of my life Rik Mayall felt like one of the only people I could be my true self around. 

But if I'm honest, I think I always knew that really, even then. I knew it, because I remember what hurt most about losing Rik was the feeling that I'd never get to thank him. That being said, I hazard that if you've seen me perform or know me personally, you might notice a spark of Rik Mayall in a lot of what I do. I believe I thank Rik, by creating in his glow. Things aren't perfect, I know they could be better, but I'm also not that scared little girl anymore, I'm not a passive bystander to my own life and I am trying very hard to explore the doors it felt like Rik opened for me. 13 year old Beth was never silly for hurting, it was fundamental, a big part of who we are - a very loving and emotional human being - and I know if she could see us now she'd loose her fucking shit at how cool we are! 

we're getting there mate x

Thanks Rik.

With love and violence, 

Beth xxx